Something that has been suggested by Finance Directors attending our Environmental Accounting seminars over the years is that the Companies Acts need to be brought up to date in what they require of company directors. The suggestion has been made several times that the requirement to maximise shareholder value, which may have been appropriate in the nineteenth century – is now inappropriate as it stands.  Points such as these have been made:

Increasingly we recognise environmental (and social) limits.  With this change comes opportunity.  Companies can best meet this with an integrated approach.

[ The CSEM-BMP Sustainability Leadership Programme includes an Integration module.  The following essay is based on insights gained from running that module. ]

Here are 10 actions to save the Planet.

1. Establish a programme of 10 actions to save the Planet.
2. Declare a Global State of Emergency.
3. Establish a standard method for measuring the sustainability of a company.

You cannot outsource responsibility; responsibility is something one must take oneself. By admitting that things could be better, that a change is needed, one can become part of the change, can become physically and emotionally invested in seeing the change happen and to ensuring its success.

Yet Green CO2, commenting on the recent launch of their green travel service for business, claims that the scheme, “provides employers with a CSR programme at no cost”.

High street retailer GAP released their fourth social responsibility report last week. Outlining the measures the company is taking to “make their clothes more sustainable” and to foster “a culture that supports responsible business practices”, the report is available online only and contains an impressive list of goals and progress against those goals.

Today the UK Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have published their report on Securing food supplies up to 2050: the challenges faced by the UK.

In 'Fish technology' draws renewable energy from slow water currents the University of Michigan News Service describe a machine called VIVACE (Vortex Induced Vibrations for Aquatic Clean Energy).
VIVACE has also been featured recently as "Ocean currents can power the world, say scientists" by Jasper Copping of the Daily Telegraph.

Welcome to CSEM-BMP Comment. Here Professor Ross King, I and other senior members of CSEM-BMP Staff will be posting comment on issues we find interesting, with the intention that you may find them of interest also. Michael Baker. Joint Programme Director, CSEM-BMP PS We have placed a few posts on CSEM-BMP Comment based on papers and emails that we have written over the past year, to give an indication of the type of comment you can expect here in the future.

“The future of the (Environmental and Sustainability Management) profession will involve requirements for highly developed professional management capability and technical skills, and these will need to include contracting skills to contract the resources needed to handle the many and varied responsibilities.” Ross King, p421, ‘The Future of the Profession’, Environmental Management in Organisations, IEMA Handbook 2005 “Oh, for a magic wand...” – English saying

Practicalities of reaching a contract with a supplier

When a contract comes up for agreement, it normally takes someone skilled in contracting/ contract administration at least six weeks to sort out, since each round of work triggers other important thoughts and considerations. This does not mean at all that this work will consume six man-weeks. From an initial draft contract document, it encompasses successive rounds of each Party considering and responding to the other’s drafts and redrafts – and coming to a competent and amicable agreement.

The 'Myth of Global Warming' is contradicted by your own and my own experience. We are facing a period of rapid climate change (CC). The science has been very heavily funded for 20 years and the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, which is the UN focus for this has commissioned thousands of studies. In my view, it is not the poodle of some sect of environmental scientists hell-bent on rail-roading the world into topping up their research budgets. This is a strange Anglo-American myth of its own amongst those who are not mainstream CC researchers.