EIA and SEA. Iiwo’uyaa Project. Cerrejon coal mine in Colombia

Carbones del Cerrejon is an integrate mining and transport complex in La Guajira, a department in the northernmost section of Colombia. It includes a thermal coal open-pit mine that produces 32 million tones a year, a railroad that is 150 kilometers long, and a maritime port able to receive ships of up to 180,000 tones dead weight. Cerrejon is one of the most important extractive companies in the world; it provides more than 10.000 direct and 40.000 indirect employments and its exports represents the half of the total of the country.

Last year, Cerrejon presented a proposal to expand their operations to increase the coal exploitation. This is known as the Iiwo’uyaa Project. The goal is to extract coal from an unexploited area, specifically under a river called Rancheria.. With this project the yearly coal production could be duplicated, until 60 million of tones, which increase 64% the total coal reservoir (available for the company’s concession).

The project requires environmental changes and high investment cost, including new infrastructure near the mine, the railroad and the port. It needs two more blocks for waste disposal and additional areas for developing the project, that represent land-conflicts with the local communities. there are also implication on pollution, noise, traffic and air and water quality; the excavations will reduce the amount of subterranean water of the immediate areas. Alls this costs, activities and mitigations programs are include in the project.

On of the most important concerns is related to the change of the river’s course, due to the location of the coal. Cerrejon has done estimations about the potential damages on flora, fauna and general habitat, including the local indigenous communities (Wayuus). The main economic activities of theses communities are farming, fishing, and salt production. In their culture the relation with soil and water is fundamental, in which the Rancheria River plays a major role.

All the changes needed for the infrastructure building were evaluated and approved by the local government. Cerrejon have been working on the Environmental Impact Assessment for the project that responds to the requirement of the Ministry of Environment of Colombia. This first draft makes a description of the project and an estimation of the possible impacts on persons and environment, and states the compromises that the Company does to minimize the negative impacts and maximizes the benefits. This draft is being under public consultant (for stakeholders dialogue and engagement). This represents an opportunity to make comments and being involve in the process.

For more info:

http://www.slideshare.net/fecherman/proyecto-de-expansin-del-cerrejon-iiwouyaa

http://www.cerrejon.com/site/english/our-company/who-we-are.aspx

Comments Off on EIA and SEA. Iiwo’uyaa Project. Cerrejon coal mine in Colombia / 07 Feb 2012 por Diana Patricia Sanchez Barajas
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CLIMATE CHANGE – VULNERABILTY

Malawi as a land locked country, depends largely on Agriculture for its economic growth. Viability in climate has greatly affected the performance of its agriculture-based industry due to floods, droughts, strong winds and landslides. The majority of the country,s population about 80% live in the rural areas and depends on agriculture for their survival both for food and economic sources.

Vulnerability measures a country’s exposure, sensitivity and ability to cope with climate related hazards, as well as accounting for the overall status of food, water, health and infrastructure within the nation.

 

Using the adaptation Index Malawi falls on number 135 on the ranking , under the high vulnerability and  with low levels of readiness. In terms of the sectors, it show that the food contributes 25% of the vulnerability, the Health contributes 39%, the infrastucture contributes 22% and the Water contributes 13%.  On readiness composition; the country has 44% of economic, 34% of governance and 21% on social readness. From this we can see that the health contributes to higher vulnerability nad this can be attributed by things like  HIV AIDs pandemic, malnutrition but also poor medical services. On the food, this can be due to the floods, poor agricultural, dependency on one food crop but also poverty levels.

This will requires the country to put in place strategies to improve its ability to adapt. There is need for increased investiment and innovation for the country to be able to adapt to the challenges imposed by climate change. However investiment is also sometimes hindered by other epidemic like HIVAIDs  which becomes a priority at the moment. There is need for international support in investing in techologies which will asist the country to adapt.

Using the DARA Climate Vulnerability Report, Malawi show high vulnerability to health impact and economic stress as we see  can from the bubles which will be in an acute category in years to come. This is due to the impact from the problems due to climate change like floods, however there will be no great impact on Habitat loss and weather disasters.

On economic stress, we see that the situation will also get worse from severe plus to acute plus. This is mainly because Malawi as a country depends on agriculture for its export and this is one of the sectors which is heavily affected by climate change. The majority of Malawians live directly off the country’s rich natural resource base, which is vulnerable to droughts and floods. The poor, often living at the margin of survival, cannot manage risk as they are ill-equipped to deal with crises of such magnitude. Since agriculture is extremely vulnerable to drought, it is necessary to promote drought-tolerant crop varieties and hardy livestock in drought-prone areas, develop irrigation and promote farming using residual moisture, especially along dambos.  Unless this is taken seriously, Malawi will not be in a position to adapt the pressure due to climate change.

Healths is more linked to the economic and for the case of malawi, its very crucial since 80% of the population depends highely on Agriculture which is vulnerable to climate change. There is also high dependency on external support on health, and this might cause more stress on the population if the country do not put up measures.

 

The Climate Vulnerability Monitor 2010

http://daraint.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/CVM_Complete-1-August-2011.pdf

Global Adaptation Index

http://index.gain.org/

Comments Off on CLIMATE CHANGE – VULNERABILTY / 07 Feb 2012 por Tabithah Mkandawire Kaluwa
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Environmental Impact Assessment for the third runway of the Munich Airport

The Munich airport would like to build a third runway to cope with the estimated increase to 58.2 million passengers in 2025. The current area of the airport comprises 1,560 hectares, from which nearly 60% are green spaces. The planned runway should have a length of 4,000 meters and a width of 60 meters. The likely land use outside of the existing airport would be around 970 hectares.

The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has already been done in 2006 and took a look at following sectors: Humans (health and well-being), animals (wild animals and their habitats), plants, biodiversity, soil, surface waters, groundwater, air, climate, landscape, cultural goods and possible interactions.

The main impacts would be on human settlements north and northeast of the airport because of the increasing air traffic noise during operation. “Attaching” can claim for compensations due to the increase of the continuous sound level. Additionally the habitat “Erdinger Moos” of wild animals would be affected due to the land consumption of the third runway, the noise during construction and operation and the lighting during the operation of the airport. The connectivity of the habitats would be interrupted and could hinder the migration and spread of animals and plant species.

Within the area of the planned runway is a monument, it would need a archaeological exploration before the constructions. In addition there would be a medium impact on the biodiversity in this area and on the soil. Apparently the overall appearance of the landscape would be changed too.

The airport endeavors to make its process transparent and to include the affected neighborhoods early in the planning process. It even is consent to pay 100 million Euros for compensation – without legal obligation. Nonetheless the citizens of Munich try together with NGOs to stop the process. They are collecting signatures and initiated a referendum which will be held on the 17.06.2012. At this day all citizen of Munich can vote for or against the third runway.

Resources (German), last accessed 07.02.2012:

Flughafen München (2006) Umweltverträglichkeitsstudie, http://www.dfld.de/Andere/MUC/ROV/umweltstudie_blasy.pdf

Flughafen München (without year) Dritte Start- und Landebahn, http://www.muc-ausbau.de/bahn3/index.jsp

Süddeutsche.de (2012) Flughafen München: Zehn Fakten, http://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/freising/flughafen-muenchen-zehn-fakten-ein-prosit-auf-das-fernweh-1.1124700

Comments Off on Environmental Impact Assessment for the third runway of the Munich Airport / 07 Feb 2012 por Marie Glück
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Innovation: What is Open Innovation?

Open Innovation is a recent created trend for a company to be successful in terms of innovation. It changes former habits on how to be creative and how to create ideas. When I first thought about Open Innovation in our class, one case came into my mind. It was the way how the London Olympics logo was chosen. At first well known designers were paid to create a logo. After their work was shown, nobody actually liked it. What happened is that a national contest was organized and any Brit could send his project. Finally a young man Reiss Evans’s design was chosen. The costs of the contest amounted to $500 (costs of creating the necessary website).

As far as the scientific definition is concerned I liked the most the one proposed by Henry Chessbrough in his book “Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm.” He states that: “Open innovation is the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation, and expand the markets for external use of innovation, respectively. [This paradigm] assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to market, as they look to advance their technology.”

The basic idea of Open Innovation is to change our previous common believes that by revealing our ideas somebody will steal them. The new believes are or should be that by revealing our ideas we can improve them or connect them with other ideas to create a final version of a certain innovation implementation. The idea of connecting two hunches was explained in the RSA video “Where the good ideas come from?” made by Steven Johnson.

Pinche aquí para ver el vídeo

This process can also be good for a company reputation and its relations with clients/customers. They may feel important for the company and actually feel as they contribute to the company’s development.

Within the Open Innovation paradigm there are three techniques that may be used to implement it into a company’s strategy. The first one is crowd-sourcing, which is outsourcing tasks normally conducted by an employee. Normally the outsourcing is targeted to customers, clients or users to receive ideas, comments, complains or any kind of information to improve the company’s product or service. It is a very useful tool, when it is used wisely. Sometimes company confuse it and try to use it as a marketing tool. Another technique is the user-driven innovation. It consists of a careful observation of users activity in order to obtain information that can be used in the innovation process. It is important to analyze users habits and behavior in order to transform into useful information. The third and last technique is co-creation. It is a process of opening a

panel for other companies and customers to discuss, share, combine and renew ideas to create value through learning mechanisms. Companies nowadays cannot exist without customers. The sooner the company is asking customers for their contribution the better for its performance. Nowadays there are a lot of companies that are being created, which are called Open Innovation intermediates, e.g. Spigit, The iBridge Network, Innovation Exchange and many others.

The most innovative companies in the world have used many different techniques to implement innovative ideas. IBM for instance was one of the first companies that have implemented a new work environment. They believe that innovation in the XXI century is not anymore about products but about business models and how to keep your customers loyal. Apple also has follow this business model and has become a specialist in that field. Who (from it’s users) does not love this products? Toyota on the other hand started to specialize in manufacturing processes. All of those examples are different but all where based on Open Innovation paradigm. All of those companies have created a sharing panel in order to connect one hunch with the other one.

References:

1. Lindegaard, S., “Making Open Innovation Work”, 2011
2. “The World’s Most Innovative Companies”, retrieved from http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/06_17/b3981401.htm?chan=gl
3. Chesbrough, H., “Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm”, 2006

Comments Off on Innovation: What is Open Innovation? / 07 Feb 2012 por Piotr Adam Lubiewa-Wielezynski
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Natural Resources: Slogan 6

Certify and Label It.  That’s the Key to Sustainability!
Hokuma, Lauren and Tatiana

Comments Off on Natural Resources: Slogan 6 / 07 Feb 2012 por Hokuma Karimova
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Natural Resources: Slogan 5

Pesticides Pollute, more than Contribute.
Hokuma, Lauren and  Tatiana.

Comments Off on Natural Resources: Slogan 5 / 07 Feb 2012 por Hokuma Karimova
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Innovation Blog: Will Open innovation became a Business Mainstream?

Open Innovation what does it means?

According to many enthusiasts of this new trend such as Stefan Lindeggard the owner of 15inno an website that discuss topics on open innovation, social media and thought leadership, says that open innovation is a philosophy or a mindset that should be embrace within organization in order to enable themselves to work with external input inside the innovation process, naturally as it does with internal input. In a nutshell, it is “just” about getting more external input. ¹

What is more open innovation involves going to the opposite direction of the old model of closed innovation where a company control all aspects and process of innovation from inside, trying to keep it highly secret because of intellectual property or loss of profit risks. Often in this case activities towards innovation are carried by only business R&D department, in a search to find unique or first mover competitive advantage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thus Open innovation opens business doors for the external world collaboration on ideas generation in the pursue of continuous innovation. Furthermore this approach creates many advantages since it maximize insights in the innovation process, speed up problem solving and reach areas that were not previously thought off.

 

Today there are few virtual platforms to boost and integrate open innovation for a wide open community as crowdsourcing, which brings the chance for ideas, products, projects and processes to be challenged, to be questioned, to be discussed,  to be diffused and to be improved as part of an innovative practice. In Addition, these platforms offer a great chance for networking, further collaboration and interactive research development.

For small business open innovation platforms offers great benefits because they can improve their innovative capacity with no investments, also to overcome problems of resource and constraints, to forecast future demand, to find a flexible ways to adjust and perhaps upcoming opportunities to start new partnerships.

Similarly, another type of open innovation that is more familiar innovation process but has become as much important as before is user driven innovation where companies closely consider the product or service user opinion and needs, therefore the user here “leads innovation”.

A good example of it can be seen in this video from Rogier van der Heide, Chief Design Officer of Philips Lighting, showing how the company developed new light technology for show performances by working closely with artists and producers:

Pinche aquí para ver el vídeo

Many professional and academics advocates the importance of user driven like Prof. Eric von Hippel as he mention “they have two characteristics: (1) They are at the leading edge of important market trends and; (2) they have a strong incentive to find solutions for the novel needs they encounter at the leading edge. Products that lead users develop often become the basis for important commercial products when lead user needs become mainstream.”

Lead User Innovation explanation video from Prof. Eric von Hippel

Pinche aquí para ver el vídeo

^References

1)http://www.15inno.com/2011/10/09/openclosedterms/

http://www.openinnovation.net/

http://www.openinnovation.eu/

http://www.leaduser.com/

http://www.100open.com/2011/12/surmounting-barriers-to-open-innovation/

 

 

 

Comments Off on Innovation Blog: Will Open innovation became a Business Mainstream? / 07 Feb 2012 por Patricia Perez Costa
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Beginning SEA and EIA. Fiji Tourism

Below, to start the course off here is an example of SEA and its application to Fiji’s Tourism Development

“There is a great need for auditing, impact assessments and such exercises to ensure that decisions made to implement sustainable environmental programmes are strategic, people focused and cost effective and sustainable”
-Fiji’s National Assessment report 2002 to the World Summit on Sustainable Development

Fiji’s Tourism Development Plan was written by Roger Levett and Richard McNally

The following case studies were looked into:
Case Study 1: Land Conflicts in Fiji
Case Study 2: Borocay Island, Philippines: The Erosion of Local Benefits
Case Study 3: Bali: Growing Social Problems
Case Study 4: Integrated Coastal Management in Fiji
Case Study 5: Nutrient Capture at the Shangri – La Fijian
Case Study 6: Community Based Tourism: An Example of Samoa
Case Study 7: Ecotourism: Oarsman Bay Lodge, Yasawas
Case Study 8: An Example from St. Lucia: pro poor tourism
Case Study 9: Rivers Fiji: An Example of Working with
Local Communities
Case Study 10: Environmental Protection Fund in the Cook Islands

The basic objectives of the study were to:

� assessing the environmental and sustainable development impacts of the current plan from 2002
� Test the usefulness of SEA as a tool for improving the sustainability of
strategies and plans in the Asia-Pacific region, with a view to using it more
widely in the region.

A Strategic Environmental Assessment was carried out to understand the likely environmental and social impacts of the plan. This was achieved by comparing the current environmental, social and economic baseline and likely trends under the TDP against sustainability objectives. This allows an assessment to be made of whether or not the TDP is sustainable.

SEA defined:
In 2001 the European Union (EU) adopted Directive 2001/42/EC ‘on the
assessment of the effects of certain plans and programmes on the environment’
(Commission of the European Communities 2001) setting out an approach to
SEA and requiring Member States to apply it to all plans and programmes
started after July 2004. Its purpose is ‘to provide for a high level of protection of
the environment and contribute to the integration of environmental
considerations into the preparation and adoption of plans… with a view to
promoting sustainable development’ (Article 1 of the Directive).

Effects:
cumulative: the total effect of a whole series of tourism developments on
fresh water resources in a catchment area;
� indirect: if taking prime land for tourism development pushes farmers onto
erosion-prone slopes, or if presence of more foreigners erodes young
peoples’ appreciation / respect for traditional ways of life;
� synergistic: if a combination of individually small and apparently separate
effects – for example increases in nutrient loading from sewerage, seepage
from landfill, more boat movements, more contact from divers and warming
of the sea due to climate change – might in combination cause enough stress
to corals to kill reefs.

SEA Process broken down by stages:
1.) Identify relevant plans and programmes and their relation to the plan
2.) Devise draft SEA objectives, indicators and targets, collect baseline data, including data on likely future trends, issues and constraints
3.) Identify options for dealing with the plan issues
4.) Prepare scoping report, consult
5.) Assess the plan options effect on the SEA objectives and their consistency with relevant other plans and programmes, choose preferred options, propose mitigation measures
6.) Screen the plan policies and policies and proposals, assess their effect on the SEA objectives, propose mitigation measures including links to EIA
7.) Propose SEA monitoring
8.) Prepare the Environmental Report to accompany the draft plan, consult
9.) Take consultation results into account

Comments Off on Beginning SEA and EIA. Fiji Tourism / 07 Feb 2012 por Lauren Musiello
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Entrepreneurial Initiative: PeRuPiL

PeRuPiL Team: Pedro Pernas, Rubén Pardo, Piotr Wielezynski, Ildikó Heim

“PeRuPiL, alias save on telecommunication bills”

 

Business idea:
Our company will satisfy one main necessity: the lack of time to take care of phone bills. Nowadays there are a lot of different offers of telecommunication companies and people don´t have time to worry about it. To start our company, we are going to focus on Erasmus students. Their necessities for someone helping them with the phone offers are bigger than for normal clients. We will study the case of our different clients and after that we will advice the best solution for them.

Opportunities
We found our niche in the fact that people feel robbed by the bug communication companies. Newcomers are even more exposed to feel robbed. Also most of them is going to pick pre-paid systems. For a little fee we will be able to propose to a group of people the same tariff, so it would be cheaper for them to call between each other. Newcomers are always lost and they have other important things to do, so our company will be offering a very practical service.

 

PESTEL Analysis

Political future

• Politicians  are in favor as we work for the citizens, putting a balance into the market
• Liberal market

Economic future

• Lower costs, more savings for clients
• Because of current macroeconomic situation people try to save more on everything

Socio-cultural future

• Giving customers the feeling of fairness
• Customers appreciate saving time and money

Technological future

• Internet based solution

Environmental future

• We are an environmental-friendly company, recollecting devicesnot needed anymore

Legal future

• No confrontation and risk visible

 

 

SWOT

Strengths

• Market is segmented, the target group is homogeneus (same requirements regarding short time use, international calls)
• Known potential customers and their needs (surveys)
• Easy, inexpensive advertising and distribution channels (university international/Erasmus offices etc)
• Independent from suppliers
• Big potential to increase,  new launches planned
• Organisation and structure: adapted to the project
• solvency and finance independence
• Collection average period

Weaknesses

• Lack of real field experience
• Company unknown, we have to gain the customers’ confidence

Opportunities

• Spain is the biggest Erasmus students receiving country (35.000 students last year)

• Not many current competitors
• No entry barriers

Threats

• Lobby of the big telecommunication companies in long term
• New competitors entering the market as no entry barriers
• People can do it by themselves if they take the time and overcome language barrier

1 comentario / 07 Feb 2012 por Ildiko Heim
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Climate Change – Climate Vulnerability and Global Adaptation Index in China

According to the Global Adaptation Index, which measures the vulnerability of a country to climate change based on water, food, infrastructure and health, China is the 70th least vulnerable and the 17th least ready country, which means that it faces few immediate challenges. The overall score of China in 2010 was 0.262, and it has decreased significantly in the last 14 years.  The most vulnerable variables for China are water (38%), health (32%) and food (18%).

In 2010, the extreme weather events caused floods and low temperatures that resulted in 4,800 deaths and direct economic losses of US$75 billion. Currently more than 14 provincial economies could be at risk from water stress. As seawater is entering into river the mouths fresh water quality and supply can be affected.

Data shows that due to climate change the major crops will decrease, which will affect in food security. China´s average annual grain losses are about 10% and adverse impacts of climate change would increase the costs of future agricultural production. On the other hand, extreme summer has caused coal prices to increase and hydropower to decrease, which have resulted in energetic cuts and blackouts.

 

This Climate Vulnerability Monitor diagram shows that China´s vulnerability is high and that it will continue increasing. Habitat loss and weather disasters will become more vulnerable from 2010 to 2030. Some of the effects related to these are that China may become deprived of conifer forest, 30% of coral reefs can be lost in the next 10 years and coastal erosion and glacier area loss will be aggravated.

Due to China´s increasing rates of urbanization, industrialization and energy consumption, it will continue facing severe challenges related to climate change. The country should focus on the following 4 areas to increase its adaptation to climate change:

1. Strengthening agriculture infrastructure
2. Enforcing laws to protect ecosystems and wildlife
3. Protecting coastal regions
4. Enhancing water resource management

Souces

Chan, Wi-Shin. China´s rising climate risk. November 9, 2011. http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/4618

China´s march towards green revolution. BBC. Octobre 2009. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8311223.stm

Climate Change: Impacts, Vulnerabilities, and Adaptation in Developing countries. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/publications/impacts.pdf

Climate Change Impacts, Vulnerability and Adaptation in China. Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development for Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.  September 2007.  http://www.basic-project.net/data/final/Paper06China%20Impacts%20%20Vulnerability%20and%20Adaptation.pdf

Climate Vulnerability Monitor 2010. DARA. http://daraint.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/CVM_Complete-1-August-2011.pdf

China´s National Climate Change Program. China.org.cn. June 4, 2007. http://www.china.org.cn/english/environment/213624.htm#16

Comments Off on Climate Change – Climate Vulnerability and Global Adaptation Index in China / 06 Feb 2012 por Laura Rubio
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