Strategic Newsletter Launches: September Edition 2013

Signals of Change newsletter  monitors the news flow from a wide variety of sources from the last 30 – 60 days for developments that could inform your organization’s social and environmental strategy which in turn could affect your overall business strategy.  Signals of Change Newsletter is produced in  cooperation between the Open World Foundation, the Institute of Swedish Safety and Security and Stephen Hinton Consulting.

The newsletter is released once a month to subscribers only. (To subscribe and be fully up to date – it’s free – click here). The newsletter is released a few weeks later for public reading on partner websites. […]

Overshoot day August 20: will “economic” reality meet resource reality?

Let us look at overshoot day from the point of view of economics. By economics I mean the technology of keeping track of housekeeping with resources and keeping track of material obligations to those around us.  Economics does not need to be restricted to counting with money. Other measures can be used. And it is fascinating to try it. In this case we can consider that a Nation has its own household that it needs to keep fed and housed, and has its natural resources to do it. We start with a situation however where many nations are living over their means. […]

Learning from the ECO-ISLANDS conference

Bornholm2

One of the electric cars you rent with a simple text message

Arriving at this year’s ECO ISLANDS conference, held on the Danish Island of Bornholm, I wasn’t expecting it to feel like a Transition meeting. I was attending the conference to discuss things related to my day job – pollution taxes. I was delighted as the conference progressed to discover that many islands around the world are going through their own transition process, even if most of them hadn’t heard of Transition Towns. ECO ISLANDS is a network of Islands that have stated that they are aiming toward sustainability, by signing something called the Accord, a statement of intent that over 50 islands have already signed. […]

Shifting Power, Shifting Economy

Lindesberg1

Lindsberg Conference Center basking in the late summer sunshine

Lindsberg conference center, just outside the Swedish town of Falun, saw three days of Powershift Sweden with PUSH, a youth movement conference for action for a fossil-free society. As a fellow of ISSS (the Institute of Swedish Safety and Security) and one of the founders of Transition Sweden, I brought the complementary currency ITK to the seminar  as the conference’s volunteer currency. […]