Recent Articles
Justice and Democracy In Social Media – KONY
By Amadou M. Cissé
I am sure by now that most of you have heard about if not already seen the video that went viral on YouTube entitled Kony 2012, a documentary asking to put an end to the abhorrent activities to the International Criminal Court’s most wanted criminal, Joseph Kony. A Ugandan national, Kony is the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army and is infamously known to have abducted over 30,000 children as recruits to his army. What I found most tragic about the video was the fact that children soldiers have become the norm in conflict areas in Africa and sadly there seems to be a very lethargic reaction to this outrage.
I commend Invisible Children for having the courage to discuss a very difficult and even controversial subject using social media. To raise awareness of an unspoken situation, you have to engage people and initiate the discussion. Kony 2012 generated a lot of debates for and against the movement. Opponents of the video have stated that releasing the video has not helped the situation since Kony is still free, somewhere in central Africa, still abducting children and engaged in a senseless rebellion. The same opponents will add that this video is again exploiting the misfortune of Africans to profit Westerners. I totally disagree with these views for two reasons. First, I have not seen any of these opponents do something themselves to help stop Kony besides criticizing. Second, not talking about Kony means that we are not giving a voice to those who have no means to advocate for themselves.
NGOs and Activists Tackle Rubbish on Mt. Everest
By Amadou M. Cissé
Mt. Everest or Sagarmatha is “so high that no bird can fly [above it]” as the saying goes in Nepal. It takes a great amount of training and finances to make it to the peak of the highest mountain in the world. During a recent course in ethics, we Professor Lele discussed the famous HBR case study parable of the sadhu. In it, the author discussed the months he spent hiking through Nepal where he encountered an Indian holy man, or sadhu. The sadhu was left in poor health conditions to fend for himself while the group continued their way up the slope. What happened to the sadhu? Nobody knows, but what has happened to Sagarmatha is very clear or I should say very dirty.
Sagarmatha is prized for its beauty but stories about the litter problem are all too common. In 2007 there were 110, 000 pounds of garbage on Sagarmatha. The good news is that since 2000, there have been several initiatives attempting to restore the mountain while educating locals as well as tourists.
Economic Prosperity vs. Environmental Stewardship in China
Courtesy of Associated Press
A few days ago, on my way home I was listening to NPR and I heard about yet another chemical spill in a river in China. It turns out that seven people had been detained in connection with the toxic metal (cadmium) spill in a tributary of the Pearl River in the Guangxi province. The spill threatens the livelihood of 1.5 million people in the city of Liujiang. As China continues to enjoy its economic prosperity – being the second largest economy in the world – how can it also become a leader in environmental stewardship?
China has an estimated population of 1.3 billion people according to the latest report from the CIA. A spill impacting 1.5 million people or 0.1% of the Chinese population would have been impacting almost the entire population of the state of Idaho! Such a spill would be considered a major crisis in the US, especially when one understands the dangers associated with cadmium like kidney failure and cancer. Cadmium is an extremely toxic metal commonly found in industrial workplaces, particularly where any ore is being processed or smelted.
Getting Hospitality to See Green
By Eric Flamer
The US Green Building Council reports that as of March 3, 2011, 91 hotel properties have achieved LEED certification, with an additional 1100 projects registering with LEED and working towards certification.
From my employment experience in the Washington, DC convention hotel market, the truth is that most of the buildings dedicated to hospitality were constructed in the era preceding the green revolution, and are sorely lacking in any type of energy efficiency. What are some ways the industry can align guest satisfaction, bottom-line reduction, and green values successfully?
Recently I came across a LEED gold-certified property during some volunteer work in East Baltimore, MD: Marriot’s Fairfield Inn and Suites takes pride in being Baltimore’s first green hotel.
After examining the Fairfield’s greening strategies, there are some points to consider in examining the overall trend towards a greener hospitality industry:
Training for the Sustainable Supply Chain
By Stephen Huie, MBA 2012
In recent years, organizations have developed increasingly creative and large scale supply chain initiatives to deal with increasing energy costs, a recessionary environment, and consumer demand for sustainable processes.
To capitalize on this evolution in practice, academic institutions must also make a conscious effort to train the next generation of supply chain managers to build upon these best practices and identify further opportunities to improve.
Bridging the Gap Between Food Insecurity and Food Waste
By: Kathryn Cai
Part of the reason why I love the summertime is that I’m so happy and carefree. I can bask in sunshine all day long and play outside surrounded by growing things. However, it would be silly to overlook the contribution that food brings to my happy, healthy mentality. In the summer, my consumption of fresh fruit and produce gets alarmingly large. I am fortunate to have food security and have access to high quality food.
The Food Security Assessment of the USDA (measuring food security in developing countries for the coming decade) estimates that approximately 882 million people are classified as “food insecure,” a designation that refers to an inability to access food that would fulfill adequate nutritional value. “Food security” encompasses “the ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods” as well as “an assured ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways.” The study predicts that the current level of food insecurity will only decrease by an aggregate 1% over the course of the decade, and that the situation in sub-Saharan Africa is particularly dire.
However, food insecurity is hardly an issue confined to the developing world. Prosperity in the United States itself is far from evenly distributed, and over 50 million people in the U.S. are food insecure. In the Smith School’s own backyard, the District of Columbia experiences food insecurity at a significantly higher rate than the national average, with most recent average values of 11.1% of households food insecure in D.C. versus 9.7% nationally.
Better World Books: Bringing Sustainability to the Printed Word
By Kathryn Cai
As a reader I cherish the complete experience of reading a book: the weight of it in my hands, the smell of the pages, the permanence of the words, and most especially, because every good book claims a little part of me, the knowledge that I can reopen the same pages and return to the self I was when I was first so captured by its words. Even in light of my (creepy?) love affair with print books, the advent of e-book readers made me briefly wonder if I should abandon paper and ink for a more sustainable way to feed my literary habit. As it turns out, however, there there’s a sustainability alternative: many booksellers are begining to integrate both social and environmental concerns into their business models.
Equal Exchange, Fair Trade Execs on Certification, Consumption and Change
By Becky Eisen, MBA Student at the University of Maryland, Smith School of Business; President, Smith Net Impact Chapter
As Leslie Lammers put the finishing touches on Organic Eggs Not Created Equal, Says New Scorecard, I spent the day at the Just Means Certification, Consumption and Change Conference at the National Press Club in Washington DC, listening to certification veterans like Fair Trade USA, Equal Exchange and the Forest Stewardship Council discuss the current state of the certification industry with a host of newer organizations that have recently formed or joined the certification movement and a smattering of USDA and other federal representatives.
First Panel: Scaling Ethical Certification; Opportunities and Challenges.
I hate starting with a complaint, but I have to report that the speakers were overly polite and skipped around the hot button topics. While some made the occasional, well-cloaked jab at particular labeling scheme, most speakers overwhelmingly read from the same script: “What is a best practice now will not be one in five years. Standards are always changing, the bar is getting higher. You need independent monitoring of compliance with standards. We should all work better together.” It was as if during a pre-conference convention they brainstormed winning campaign slogans and peer pressured each other to stick to the talking points, regardless of the panel topic or audience question.
The Mission-Profit Continuum: A Lesson from Executive Shadowing
By Stephen Huie
This past Friday, I visited Community Wealth Ventures and Share Our Strength as part of the Smith Net Impact Club’s Executive Shadowing Program. Other students visited Noblis, a non-profit scientific and engineering research center.
I learned a lot, especially about the role of mission in circumscribing the limits of earned income social ventures.
Community Wealth Ventures
Community Wealth Ventures is a for-profit firm that provides management and strategy consulting for non-profits. CWV was created as a social enterprise by Share Our Strength to assist other non-profits in developing earned income ventures. Examples include homeless shelters providing gardening services, Goodwill creating a janitorial service firm, and environmental groups creating wood certification and verification. These social ventures must deal with the competition and managerial challenges of running a business.
EPA’s National Sustainability Design Expo: A Glimpse At Our Better Future
By Guillermo Olivos
Yesterday I had the honor of joining a select group of ambassadors and corporate executives to get a sneak preview of the EPA’s National Sustainability Design Expo and P3 Competition. The event is designed as an annual event for (directly from the brochure) “teams of graduate and undergraduate students to design solutions for environmental and sustainability challenges worldwide. P3 stands for People, Prosperity, and the Planet. Fifty five of the best and brightest teams of students will showcase their work to create a greener future.
There is some pretty amazing stuff to be seen, and if you are in the DC area this weekend I encourage you to attend (yes, it’s rainy, but it’s in a tent!) You might take a look at the Rowan University team’s steel-based model of a machine that turns peanut shells into briquettes for burning— an idea that might be especially helpful for a country like Gambia that is lacking in natural forestry but can claim 8.9% of its GDP from its peanut production. Reusing waste to solve heating problems, save individuals time searching for scarce firewood, and improving quality of life? Yes sir.
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