uinternacional08

The results of the forth edition of the ‚Uinternacional’ regarding the topics of climate change, energy efficency and renewable energies are ready.

Therefore an invitation to all of you to have a look at the spots (some in Spanish, some in German, none in English – sorry for that) at: http://uinternacional2008.wordpress.com/

Where are the LOHAS practicioners in our community?

Yesterday, our blog received quite some external interest from the LOHAS blog.

What are LOHAS? LOHAS=Lifestyle of Health and Sustainability

What is our contribution as the Imagine Community to the LOHAS movement?

Blog Action Day tomorrow

Tell us more: Blog Action Day

On October 15th, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind - the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic. Our aim is to get everyone talking towards a better future.

Blog Action Day is about MASS participation. That means we need you!

How on Earth can we live together?

The Tällberg Forum event takes place June 28 – July 1, 2007 in thevillage of Tällberg, Sweden. An open conversation begun in 1981, the Forum will address the challenge of the great transition, by searching for solutions to the dilemma of increasing welfare without destroying the natural systems that support us. The Tällberg Forum 2007 has chosen as its theme “How on earth can we live together? Learn to live to learn.”

Explore the 9 questions:

• Can we do as we do?
• Do we care?
• Can we stay save?
• Can we agree?
• Can we stay healthy?
• Can we share?
• Does only money count?
• Is one Earth enough?
• What is sustainability?

Are we ready to change the rules of the game?

Every other week there is a new initiative or report popping up on my desktop trying to put latest sustainability research into practice and leading us on our way to create a more sustainable future.  

The latest one I flipped through is the collaboration between WWF and SustainAbility (a leading think tank on sustainable development and CSR) called “One Planet Business” (www.wwf.org.uk/oneplanetbusiness). Although most of the initiative’s components are not new (extensive research, multi-stakeholder processes, developing and documenting ideas), they do stress quite fundamentally the need for system change and sustainable entrepreneurship, which I have not seen elsewhere lately. 

The initiative will focus on demand areas such as mobility, food and housing as they are responsible for 63% of our ecological footprint, 65% of our CO2 emissions and 72% of our material use. The first project will concentrate on new mobility concepts and has just started. I will be curious to find out if it is only another gathering of people, expressing their opinions, compiling documents or if it can lead to real change. 

A weak point of the initiative in my eyes is the absolute focus on the environmental side of the concept of sustainability. Another new report by SustainAbility called “Raising our Game” has envisioned four different scenarios of how we will be able to manage the social as well as environmental challenges in the next 20 years. More on that one in another post to come… 

Cheers Nicki

AIESEC Alumni who IMAGINEd: Henrique Vedana

A SPECIAL TRIP
A creative project involving Danish and Brazilian students

Amalie Villesen, Fridda Flensted-Jensen, Nana Dall and Henrique Vedana are young students planting seeds in the rural communities of Porto Seguro, in the state of Bahia, Brazil, hoping that an alternative way of managing tourism emerges in those lands, considering revenue generation for the poor, preservation and valorization of the local culture, and conservation of the great cultural, natural and historical heritage that those localities have.

The concept is called Community-Based Tourism, where the communities are the ones responsible for receiving visitors and managing attractions and activities, by themselves or in partnership with the private sector with equitable community participation, as a means of using natural resources in a sustainable manner to improve their standard of living in an economic and viable way. The tourists become active participants in the process, and the community’s way of living is the main attraction.

The chosen region in the Northeast coast of Brazil, is the location where the Europeans first arrived in South America, exactly 507 years ago. Besides the unique historical importance, this region is known as the Discovery Coast, an area of great environmental relevance, recognized by UNESCO as a HotSpot and World Natural Heritage, given the highest level of biodiversity of fauna and flora found here, including a number of species only found in this region.

As a first step, the group is spending the month of May in Porto Seguro to identify the potential of the rural area of Vale Verde and Coqueiro Alto, to receive tourists and offer cultural and natural activities, and to start the community organization to take over this initiative.

Immersion inside the community life, experiences in similar projects, and community meetings were already executed in the first two weeks of the project, which will be concluded with audio-visual material about the life and history of Vale Verde, and the creation of a local network of supporters of the initiative, including public and private sectors.

The KaosPilots is an international school of Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation located in Åarhus, Denmark’s second largest city. This project is the conclusion of the first year of studies, of a total of three years, and the young students are expected to practice their ability of designing and running a project, articulate partnerships and finding innovative solutions for different problems in society.

This initiative is being executed in cooperation with IBAMA (Brazilian National Agency of National Parks and Environment), Municipality of Porto Seguro, and has technical support from Projeto Bagagem, organization with experience creating a network of community-based tourism destinations in Brazil. This has all made possible thanks to the financial support from Harris Pye (UK), Høeg Hagen & Co A/S and Scandivision (Denmark).

Contact for further information and interviews:

Henrique Vedana (henrique@kaospilot.dk)
(+55 73) 8818-6008 (in Brazil, until June 4th 2007)
(+45) 2653-4487 (in Denmark, from June 6th 2007)

Links:
Project “The Park Pilots”
The KaosPilots
Projeto Bagagem
Municipality of Porto Seguro’s Tourism Board

The BIO Daversity Code

Check out the Da Versity Code a great new animated parody of the Da Vinci Code!

And reaching out for social change at the same time!

New p2p Paradigm: If there is one must-read for 2007…

Following on the themes of technical development from Frauke and Stefan, I wanted to introduce a concept that opened my a year ago, at a conference on P2P.

The people at this event were all practitioners of some aspect of p2p, from working with ‘collective intelligence’ concepts to ‘enabling p2p process technology developments’. Most of us came to actually understand- what is this p2p thing? Prior to the event we were encouraged to read a certain 10-Page essay. In this last year I have seen many applications in my work and in society of the principles that I have gleaned from that one essay.

P2P does not just mean just Napster and file sharing. P2P as was indicated to me at this eventng ab, is beiout a paradigm shift as significant as when Marxism entered the political landscape. (wow, that caught my attention, and I listened on!)

One example of this shift is something that you may have noticed about how options/choices are screened within a group. In the old paradigm, within a community, new suggestions are first screened by some kind of small representative select group, and then only those selected suggestions will be put forward for voting/discussion to the wider community.

In a peer to peer paradigm, new suggestions are bubbling up all the time, and they are ’screened’ by the collective only AFTER they have been put forward. It is almost impossible to know which ones will carry more ‘weight’ with the community; which ones the community will select.

This has a HUGE impact for the way we govern, make decisions as a community, and for grassroots to have more powerful channels to be heard.

Introducing Michel Bauwens

Michel Bauwens has set up the Foundation for Peer 2 Peer Alternatives and was the keynote speaker at the conference last year. Aside from several years of research on this topic, Michel and his team have maintainted a blog, online resource centre and more.

see more at http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Main_Page

Key Must-Read for 2007:

What I recommend you to read at some point during 2007 (no pressure!) is Michel’s foundational article. (Yes that 10-page essay was his). I am convinced every person in this network will have at least one ‘aha!’ from this excellent piece of work.

This is not a lightweight article, it is in fact very comprehensive analysis. But persevere; because of the impact of this paradigm shift, I believe it will help you to be aware of one of the most significant shifts in our culture in this decade. It is an utterly fascinating read.

Link to article

Here is a link to the shorter (10 page) version of this article:

http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499

Synopsis

“The Political Economy of Peer to Peer Production.

Not since Marx identified the manufacturing plants of Manchester as the blueprint for the new capitalist society has there been a deeper transformation of the fundamentals of our social life. As political, economic, and social systems transform themselves into distributed networks, a new human dynamic is emerging: peer to peer (P2P). As P2P gives rise to the emergence of a third mode of production, a third mode of governance, and a third mode of property, it is poised to overhaul our political economy in unprecedented ways. This essay aims to develop a conceptual framework (’P2P theory’) capable of explaining these new social processes.”

In the Wombat’s Words

Well thank you Stefan to last week’s hosting..and to Frauke’s solid posting trail here I take the batton and start a week of blog hosting.

You know the idea was that each person would simply commit to one entry a week. And yet the hosts so far have posted more than one.

Funny how, often when the the first step in any venture is not too big, it is likely you will overshoot and do more. Isn’t that so much more effective than aiming too high, and being demotivated to continue. A trick I use to start a task that I am avoiding is to set the first step to be really small and tell myself I can stop after this point if I should wish, or take a break. This really works for me and chances are I will keep going.

SHORT VIDEO ANIMATION

Well I wanted to introduce you this week to The Wombat. He is in this very short video clip, and comes with a strong and simple message that is relevant to every concerned citizen. Amongst my colleagues we have also used the video in training purposes to lighten the topic of sustainability and ecology. You may want to do the same.

This is how it is described at Global Mindshift’s website:

“The Wombat speaks, and he’s smarter than you so, so listen up!. In less than a minute, this rapid-fire animation tells you everything you need to know about how to get along on earth for the next million years.”

Just click on the link below to see it:

http://www.global-mindshift.org/amplify/spread/wombat.asp