Sustainability news links - Nespresso sustainability, BBC complaint, Greenpeace losses
University of Michigan MBA students win competition to inject sustainability into coffee production - video; "The 2014 Nespresso Sustainability MBA challenge, which aims to find new ways to inject sustainability and shared value into the coffee industry, saw 70 MBA schools worldwide take part. Students from Yale School of Management were one of two runners-up, recognised for their strategy to combine the goals for carbon reduction of both Nespresso and coffee producing country Costa Rica."
http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/video/university-michigan-mba-nespresso-sustainability-challenge-2014-coffee-video
Common sense prevails as BBC upholds Today programme climate complaint. BBC's Editorial Complaints Unit concludes interview with Lord Lawson and Professor Sir Brian Hoskins on climate change and floods broke guidelines on due accuracy; http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2014/jun/26/commonsense-prevails-as-bbc-upholds-today-programme-climate-complaint; " Lawson made inaccurate and misleading statements about the science of climate change as he had done so in previous appearances on its programmes.
Furthermore, he was no doubt invited to participate in the interview on Today because he rejects the scientific evidence and chairs a campaign group for climate change ‘sceptics’, the Global Warming Policy Foundation...."
Greenpeace losses: leaked documents reveal extent of financial disarray; Emails and meeting notes show group’s finance department has a long history of problems in its handling of the £58m budget,
The Guardian, Monday 23 June 2014 10.09 BST; "The handling of Greenpeace International’s £58m budget has been in disarray for years, with its financial team beset by personnel problems and a lack of rigorous processes, leading to errors, substandard work and a souring of relationships between its Amsterdam headquarters and offices around the world, documents leaked to the Guardian show.
Coming after it emerged that a staffer had lost £3m on the foreign exchange market by betting mistakenly on a weak euro, the documents show that the group’s financial department has faced a series of problems, and that its board is troubled by the lack of controls and lapses that allowed one person to lose so much money.... Greenpeace, which prides itself on being largely funded by relatively small individual donations, apologised to supporters for the loss, claiming that the “serious error of judgment” was the result of a single staff member “acting beyond the limits of their authority and without following proper procedures”. But the documents show that internally the group is worried about the organisational failings that allowed it to happen....The leaked material seems to show disquiet over a continuing major restructuring, aimed at moving staff from Greenpeace International’s base in Amsterdam to national offices across the world to fulfil Naidoo’s goal of better tackling environmental problems in the global south. “This [2014] will be a testing year for all of us,” the strategy document warns....Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor, which seeks to make NGOs more transparent and accountable, said he saw parallels with the financial problems Amnesty International had experienced in recent years. “The extent of it [the financial problems] was not something I expected [at Greenpeace]. But it’s part of the fact that NGOs keep things very much within the organisation; there’s no culture of accountability. They call on governments to be accountable but they lack this in so many ways, so in that sense it’s not a surprise.”... http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/23/greenpeace-losses-financial-disarray
To target Greenpeace's flying director is to miss the point, It's easy to set green against green, but the charity's problems run wider and deeper than one person's travel plans, The Guardian, Wednesday 25 June 2014; http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/25/greenpeace-flying-director-green-charity
Common sense prevails as BBC upholds Today programme climate complaint. BBC's Editorial Complaints Unit concludes interview with Lord Lawson and Professor Sir Brian Hoskins on climate change and floods broke guidelines on due accuracy; http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2014/jun/26/commonsense-prevails-as-bbc-upholds-today-programme-climate-complaint; " Lawson made inaccurate and misleading statements about the science of climate change as he had done so in previous appearances on its programmes.
Furthermore, he was no doubt invited to participate in the interview on Today because he rejects the scientific evidence and chairs a campaign group for climate change ‘sceptics’, the Global Warming Policy Foundation...."
Greenpeace losses: leaked documents reveal extent of financial disarray; Emails and meeting notes show group’s finance department has a long history of problems in its handling of the £58m budget,
The Guardian, Monday 23 June 2014 10.09 BST; "The handling of Greenpeace International’s £58m budget has been in disarray for years, with its financial team beset by personnel problems and a lack of rigorous processes, leading to errors, substandard work and a souring of relationships between its Amsterdam headquarters and offices around the world, documents leaked to the Guardian show.
Coming after it emerged that a staffer had lost £3m on the foreign exchange market by betting mistakenly on a weak euro, the documents show that the group’s financial department has faced a series of problems, and that its board is troubled by the lack of controls and lapses that allowed one person to lose so much money.... Greenpeace, which prides itself on being largely funded by relatively small individual donations, apologised to supporters for the loss, claiming that the “serious error of judgment” was the result of a single staff member “acting beyond the limits of their authority and without following proper procedures”. But the documents show that internally the group is worried about the organisational failings that allowed it to happen....The leaked material seems to show disquiet over a continuing major restructuring, aimed at moving staff from Greenpeace International’s base in Amsterdam to national offices across the world to fulfil Naidoo’s goal of better tackling environmental problems in the global south. “This [2014] will be a testing year for all of us,” the strategy document warns....Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor, which seeks to make NGOs more transparent and accountable, said he saw parallels with the financial problems Amnesty International had experienced in recent years. “The extent of it [the financial problems] was not something I expected [at Greenpeace]. But it’s part of the fact that NGOs keep things very much within the organisation; there’s no culture of accountability. They call on governments to be accountable but they lack this in so many ways, so in that sense it’s not a surprise.”... http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/23/greenpeace-losses-financial-disarray
To target Greenpeace's flying director is to miss the point, It's easy to set green against green, but the charity's problems run wider and deeper than one person's travel plans, The Guardian, Wednesday 25 June 2014; http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/25/greenpeace-flying-director-green-charity