Long, but interesting
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>From: "vivian Hutchinson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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>Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2000 15:10:03 +1200
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>Subject: Paul Hawken in Christchurch - Redesigning Resources
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>from The Jobs Letter No.127 (14 July 2000)
>
>P A U L H A W K E N
>IN CHRISTCHURCH
>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>
>At the REDESIGNING RESOURCES conference, held in
>Christchurch last month, 200 invited business, government,
>science, arts and community leaders spent two days in
>presentations and workshops around the theme of Natural
>Capitalism.
>
>The conference was hosted by the Christchurch Employers'
>Chamber of Commerce and the Christchurch-based
>Recovered Materials Foundation. It included presentations
>from Paul Hawken (co-author of the book Natural Capitalism),
>Ray Anderson (Chairman and CEO of the Interface
>Corporation, one of the world's largest carpet companies), and
>New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark (who shifted her
>weekly cabinet meeting in order to attend).
>
>PAUL HAWKEN argues that the environment cannot be
>"saved" - nor can unemployment be "solved" - as long as
>people cling to the outdated industrial assumption that the best
>business strategy is to use more natural capital, and fewer
>people. He told the conference that moving the economy
>toward greater resource productivity can drastically reduce the
>impact we have on the environment, while at the same time
>creating more profitable businesses and increasing the overall
>levels and quality of employment.
>
>Several members of the MAYORS TASKFORCE for JOBS
>also attended the conference, and took time for a special
>meeting with Paul Hawken to discuss sustainable cities, local
>government, and the employment advantages that come from
>following a Natural Capitalism agenda.
>
>In this special feature, we give an essential summary of
>Hawken's comments from this meeting.
>
>
>ON RE-IMAGINING CITIES
>o I spend most of my time with corporations - yet the most
>interesting conversation for me is about "cities", and how to re-
>imagine them. The fact is that cities are the basic unit of
>sovereignty in the world - they always have been, and still are.
>Cities are where the rejuvenation, and all the juice, is
>happening � they are where the most imagination is, and
>where the most impact on people is. In the next century, cities
>are where social entrepreneurship will be much more dynamic
>and interesting than business entrepreneurship.
>
>o The largest corporate sector in the world is cities. It's not
>insurance, not energy, not transport, it's cities. And we forget
>that they are corporations. They don't have shareholders, but
>they certainly have stakeholders.
>
>But cities are just so much larger in scope and size than any
>other corporate sector, and yet they are always seen as
>"other", and we don't include them with business. But, without
>exception, a city of 100,000 people is far more complex than a
>company that turns over $100 billion in revenue. In other words
>your city is more complex than Royal Dutch Shell or Exxon or
>IBM or whatever.
>
>
>ON FLOWS, LOOPS AND LEAKS
>o What all cities lack is the fact that they don't have a map of
>themselves. I don't mean a road map � I mean that cities have
>no idea what their inputs and outputs really are. They do know
>perhaps about their water, energy and things that they have
>direct responsibility for � but the fact is a city is a very
>complex organism indeed, and what they don't have is a map
>of their capital flows. Their capital flows are not just their natural
>capital flows, it's also the financial capital - all the forms of capital
>that are going in and out.
>
>o Generally speaking, what you find is that cities range
>between capital exporters and capital concentrators. Cities that
>are capital concentrators, like Auckland, do very well. It doesn't
>mean they don't have problems, it just means that they have a
>surplus of cash. But many cities are in fact capital exporters
>and they have no idea why. They wonder why they have trouble
>maintaining their tax base, why the kids are leaving, why their
>education is faltering, why the housing stock is slipping, etc.
>And they wonder about this because they actually have no map
>of the capital flows in their city.
>
>A city that is a capital exporter is just like an organism that is
>slowly starving itself. With people, it's called anorexia � an
>anorexic eats just a little bit less every day than the amount of
>energy they expend and they slowly degrade as an organism.
>First they become skinny but later it's a real internal breakdown
>in terms of the organism until they die. Now, cities don't die that
>way but the fact is that the analogy is perfectly apt.
>
>Whether cities are capital concentrators or capital exporters is
>something anyone can feel by looking at the revenues, or
>population demand, or housing stock or things like that. But in
>fact there is no map, there's no mechanism, software, or
>inventory that allows cites to really understand and measure
>their capital flows, and get to see the changes that are
>occurring.
>
>The problems attendant on capital exporters or concentrators
>are very different. The problems of capital concentrators are
>growth and sprawl and noise and traffic and pollution etc. The
>cities who are de-capitalising tend to have crime and
>unemployment and drugs, poor housing etc. But whether a city
>is capitalising or de-capitalising, the fact is that in both cases
>the strategies to create a more healthy city and more jobs is to
>actually the same. The strategy is to close the capital loops,
>and to plug the capital leaks. That's why it is important to
>understand what the leaks are.
>
>o If you had a meter somewhere that told you how many
>miles to the gallon every car in your city was getting per litre
>and you could see the amount of money that's being exported,
>say from Christchurch, every second. This is happening in
>terms of the car stock, in terms of petrol - putting aside any
>mention of damage to the atmosphere and pollution. This
>information would give you a picture of the true capital flow of
>what's going on in Christchurch. And you would be astonished.
>
>The fact is the money goes through the dealer ... but it keeps
>going right out of this country to Japan, to the rest of the world.
>The fact that money is being transacted is a good thing - but
>the point is that the transaction doesn't come back to New
>Zealand very much. Maybe they buy some lamb, maybe they
>buy some wool � but the fact is it is not coming back to you.
>
>o So when mapping the capital flows in a city you are really
>starting to look and ask: Where is it leaking? Where's all the
>money going? Where's it coming in too? And when it comes in
>- keep it. Keep it and have it turn around more there in your city.
>This will raise more real income. And the more people who are
>working, the better the tax base. And so you can actually lower
>taxes because your gross taxable revenues are going up. All
>this reinforces the kind of action that you want to take on behalf
>of social issues, environmental issues, and quality of life in the
>city.
>
>o So a healthy city is one in which you look at all the capital
>flows and start to close the loops. A healthy city is like a healthy
>watershed. A healthy watershed receives water quickly, sucks it right up
>and releases it slowly. A sick watershed, whether it is forested or
>overgrazed, receives water slowly ... the rain runs right off because the
>sick watershed gives it up very quickly. A sick economic watershed - such
>as a city - doesn't accept money very quickly. It accepts it slowly ...
>and the money goes right out of the city the next day.
>
>
>ON ENERGY RETROFITTING
>o My colleagues and I have worked with cities to try to
>reverse capital flows. In the case of energy, we have worked
>with a town in the United States where they have hot summers
>and cold winters - so there was a lot of air conditioning in the
>summer and a lot of heating in the winter. It has a large
>population of people who were not that economically well-off,
>they could not afford the kind of housing stock that was well
>insulated and energy-efficient. A great percentage of their
>income was going out on their utility bills ... so of course that's
>money they're not spending on education, or on a lot of other
>things. Furthermore, the energy utility was not in their town, it
>was a nuclear utility 200 miles away and so that money was just
>gone � it didn't come back to town at all. Again, that's an
>unhealthy economic watershed.
>
>o What we did is we worked with a window company, to
>establish a factory that would be co-owned with the city. This
>company would retrofit all the substandard housing with thermal
>panes that were manufactured in the city and then installed
>directly. Actually this was cheaper than buying the windows
>through a dealer network, and it employed people in the city.
>The people whose houses the windows were installed in had to
>pay nothing. In fact they were paid five hundred dollars for the
>trouble and inconvenience of having all their windows replaced
>... and also because the energy audit showed that the amount
>of money the customers were spending on energy was far
>greater than the cost of the retrofit even with interest payments.
>
>We were going to use the power of the city to borrow money -
>in the United States a city can issue industrial development
>bonds which are tax deductible which have very low interest
>rates. So we would use IDDs to finance the factory, finance the
>retrofit, and people would pay for the windows over time but
>they would pay for it in the savings of energy that they were
>getting from having their houses retrofitted ... which also
>included insulation and other types of energy conservation
>measures.
>
>o So now what you have is the people in the houses having
>better and more comfortable houses, and their utility bills were
>actually going down. The project was providing work in the
>town, and people who were jobless were now being trained.
>We were upgrading their skills, so that they would have skill
>sets that would be valuable after the town was retrofitted, which
>would take quite a number of years. So the "wins" went right
>across, because we were literally plugging the energy leaks -
>and closing the capital flow loops as well.
>
>
>ON WATER AND CAR "PARKS"
>o The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) mandated the
>same city to build a secondary wastewater treatment plant. The
>EPA said that the water that was running off the streets was
>polluted, which it was, because of cars. But it was going into
>the Tennessee River, which meant the city had to meet the
>new Clean Water Act, which also meant they had to built a
>$100 million secondary wastewater treatment plant.
>
>Well, it was the last thing the city wanted. They wanted clean
>water, but they didn't want to spend $100 million, and the last
>thing they needed was a higher tax rate. This is a city that had
>seen industry leave, not come � and they were trying to make
>the city more attractive to business, not less attractive with
>higher taxes.
>
>And so again they came to us and asked: "What would you do
>using natural capitalism?" We studied it and looked at it � and
>then we asked them a question: How were you going to tax the
>businesses on their water run-offs? They replied that they were
>going to tax businesses by the square footage of roof and
>parking lots. This makes sense - the bigger the footprint, the
>bigger the water runoff , and the more you pay a fair share. But
>we thought about it and said: Well, we think you should tax the
>runoff by the gallon, not by the square foot. They asked:
>What's the difference? The answer is that the businesses have
>no incentive not to have a runoff. There's no incentive at all.
>
>o We showed them a plan to retrofit all of the parking lots in
>town. They were all classic solid paved areas built with slopes
>starting in the middle and draining towards the edges so that
>the water would go to the streets and not leave the cars sitting
>in water.
>
>What we talked about is retrofitting them with permeable or
>pervious paving which is used in industrial parks all throughout
>Europe. It is standard operating procedure over there right now
>- but somehow America never figured that out.
>
>o At the same time we were doing work in the city on a
>design to make that part of the city into a botanical garden. This
>area in Tennessee is actually an area of the greatest botanical
>biodiversity in the United States. So that seemed like a good
>idea.
>
>What we suggested is making the parking lots - whether they
>be private or public - into "parks" that you park cars on. So not
>only was there pervious paving � but we also put very tough
>resistant sedges and grasses in these tiles so that they take up
>a tremendous amount of water, and act to recharge the
>groundwater. And in all the medians and perimeters of the
>parking lots, we planted trees that were water-loving and fast-
>growing that also reflected the variety of trees that were once in
>the area. We actually named them - just like in a botanical
>garden
>
>o The point is that if you did all this you wouldn't need a
>secondary wastewater treatment plant. This retrofitting of
>parking lots means you're not contracting to a big business in
>San Francisco to treat waste water in Tennessee. You're
>treating it right there using the ground, the earth, the rocks, the
>sand � which basically filter what pollutants are all in the water.
>So then we asked businesses: If retrofitting your parking lots is
>cheaper than paying the taxes, would you do it? And they said:
>That's a no-brainer, of course we'd do it!
>
>o This retrofitting is a classic local job scheme. It means
>you're giving people work over years and years of retrofitting �
>and it is good work, they're making beautiful places. They're
>not just working in the streets and digging them up, which is
>okay, but I mean they're actually making beautiful places.
>
>We suggested to the city that since they were going to pass a
>$100 million bond anyway (for the secondary wastewater
>treatment plant) that had to be paid for in perpetuity� we
>suggested that they pass a $10-15 million bond and this bond
>would be used to hire youth during the summer to maintain the
>parking lots - to trim the shrubberies, and the trees and the
>flowers and so forth, because this is when the trees grow the
>fastest, and you're gonna have to do some trimming work. So
>not only would you be employing in the summer the youth in the
>city, they'd also be learning the unique botany of the region.
>
>
>ON JOBS IN SUSTAINABLE CITIES
>o These examples give you a way of thinking about a city as
>an organism, how to think about the flows, how to imaginatively
>close the loops, plug the leaks, and how you create more jobs
>and you reduce taxes or don't raise them. You also employ
>more people in meaningful living wage jobs and you retain the
>money that the city has within the city.
>
>The normal idea is that, if you want to create jobs� you've got
>to spend a lot of money. People usually need money to make
>jobs. But the fact is these examples are taking the money
>people were already spending on their cities and re-circulating
>it in an entirely different ways to create local employment.
>
>And when you look at these examples, they end up with better
>cities to live in, they're better cities to walk in, they're better
>cities for business, and they raise property values. So again,
>the "wins" are so endless. It sounds ridiculous, but in fact as
>you can tell here that the solutions are cheaper than the
>problems as they existed. And yet you create jobs.
>
>Source - Paul Hawken meeting with the Mayors Taskforce for
>Jobs, Christchurch Conference Centre, 27 June 2000
>
>
>REDESIGNING RESOURCES
>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>- growing the economy while healing the environment
>Christchurch Conference Centre
>25-27 June 2000
>
>o Many participants at the Redesigning Resources
>conference believe that Natural Capitalism is a ground-
>breaking paradigm for the new economy and one which could
>transform our fundamental notions about commerce and its
>role in shaping a sustainable future. The conference organisers
>repeated the recommendations of many world leaders, such
>as President Bill Clinton, who were heralding the growing
>corporate interest in its principles. (Tachi Kuichi, Managing
>Director of Mitsubishi Electric Corporation and Chairman of
>The Future 500, describes Natural Capitalism as "a manifesto
>for the second industrial revolution�" )
>
>o The Christchurch conference brought together six leading
>companies and organisations who agreed to be "case studies"
>in workshops on how these businesses could be redesigned
>under a natural capitalism agenda.
>
>These included: The Warehouse (NZ's largest retail group),
>Macpac (manufacturers of outdoor and wilderness equipment),
>Landcare Research (a NZ Crown Research Institute), Orion NZ
>(A national electrical network management company), the
>Christchurch City Council, and the Shire of Yarra Ranges (the
>largest metropolitan council in Melbourne, Victoria).
>
>The workshops at the conference were challenging and
>creative � and sometimes combative and argumentative. It's
>not every day that six major companies and organisations open
>themselves up to direct and frank feedback from a cross-
>section of business, government and community leaders.
>
>But the Redesigning Resources organisers were clear from
>the outset that this conference was also designed to be a
>catalyst for action. At the end of the two-day workshops, these
>six "case study" organisations committed themselves to
>genuine progress on their own natural capitalism agenda. They
>drew up specific goals covering a two-year timeframe, and
>progress on these goals will be reported on in the Resigning
>Resources website � soon to be online.
>
>o The Mayors from the Mayors Taskforce for Jobs who
>attended the Christchurch forum included: Sukhi Turner
>(Dunedin), Garry Moore (Christchurch), Claire Stewart (New
>Plymouth), Jenny Brash (Porirua), Michael McEvedy (Selwyn),
>Jill White (Palmerston North), Tim Shadbolt (Invercargill) and
>John Chaffey (Hurunui).
>
>o For more information on the Redesigning Resources
>conference, contact Mark Prain at Redesigning Resources,
>P.O.Box 6320, Upper Riccarton, Christchurch phone 03-341-
>1959 email [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
>
>NATURAL CAPITALISM
>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>
>o What is Natural Capitalism? Hawken says it's what
>capitalism might become if its largest category of capital - the
>"natural capital" of ecosystem services - were properly valued.
>Hawken and his co-authors, Amory and Hunter Lovins,
>describe a journey towards natural capitalism which involves
>four major shifts in business practices:
>
>- Dramatically increase the productivity of natural resources.
>
>" Reducing the wasteful and destructive flow of resources from
>depletion to pollution represents a major business opportunity.
>Through fundamental changes in both production design and
>technology, farsighted companies are developing ways to
>make natural resources - energy, minerals, water, forests -
>stretch 5, 10, even 100 times further than they do today. These
>major resource savings often yield higher profits than small
>resource savings do and not only pay for themselves over time
>but in many cases reduce initial capital investments."
>
>-Shift to biologically inspired production models (bio-mimicry).
>
>" Natural capitalism seeks not merely to reduce waste but to
>eliminate the very concept of waste. In closed-loop production
>systems, modeled on nature's designs, every output either is
>returned harmlessly to the ecosystem as a nutrient, like
>compost, or becomes an input for manufacturing another
>product. Such systems can often be designed to eliminate the
>use of toxic materials, which can hamper nature's ability to
>reprocess materials."
>
>- Move to a solutions-based business model.
>
>" The business model of traditional manufacturing rests on the
>sale of goods. In the new model, value is instead delivered as
>a flow of services - providing illumination, for example, rather
>than selling light-bulbs. This model entails a new perception of
>value, a move from the acquisition of goods as a measure of
>affluence to one where well-being is measured by the
>continuous satisfaction of changing expectations for quality,
>utility, and performance. The new relationship aligns the
>interests of providers and customers in ways that reward them
>for implementing the first two innovations of natural capitalism -
>resource productivity and closed-loop manufacturing."
>
>- Reinvest in natural capital.
>
>" Ultimately, business must restore, sustain, and expand the
>planet's ecosystems so that they can produce their vital
>services and biological resources even more abundantly.
>Pressures to do so are mounting as human needs expand, the
>costs engendered by deteriorating ecosystems rise, and the
>environmental awareness of consumers increases.
>Fortunately, these pressures all create business value."
>
>Source - Harvard Business Review (May-June 1999)
>
>o For a fuller overview of the principles of Natural Capitalism,
>see The Jobs Letter No.61 (available on
>www.jobsletter.org.nz), or visit the Natural Capitalism website at
>www.natcap.org.
>
>o For specific comments by Paul Hawken on employment
>issues from a Natural Capitalism perspective, see The Jobs
>Letter No.118 (our special issue on "Jobs from Waste", also
>available on our website).
>
>
>C R E D I T S
>-------------------
>edited by Vivian Hutchinson for the Jobs Research Trust
>P.O.Box 428, New Plymouth, New Zealand
>phone 06-753-4434 fax 06-759-4648
>Internet address -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>The Jobs Letter -- an essential information and media watch
>on jobs, employment, unemployment, the future of work,
>and related economic and education issues.
>
>The Jobs Research Trust -- a not-for-profit Charitable Trust
>constituted in 1994 to develop and distribute information that
>will help our communities create more jobs and reduce
>unemployment and poverty in New Zealand.
>
>Our internet website at
>
> http://www.jobsletter.org.nz/
>
>contains our back issues and key papers,
>and hotlinks to other internet resources.
>
>ends
>------
>
>vivian Hutchinson
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>phone 06-753-4434 fax 06-759-4648
>P.O.Box 428
>New Plymouth, Taranaki, New Zealand
>
>visit The Jobs Research Website
>Premier Award Winner of the 1999 Media Peace Awards
>http://www.jobsletter.org.nz/
>
