Island Thesis

Here's a brief overview of the research I'm currently into with Gabriela Boscio (from Puerto Rico) and Natalie Mebane (from Trinidad & Tobago) - doing something cool while getting a Master's degree in the bag is indeed quite pleasant!

Haha, well the topic can be viewed more seriously. 

Each thesis group is expected to use these principles to explore a topic from the perspective of how it may help or hinder society to achieve sustainability. What we aim to do is to evaluate the 'Mauritius Strategy' (MSI) as a tool for sustainable development.

The MSI is the current consensus document of the United Nation which seeks to assist Small Island Developing States (SIDS - sorry you will have to keep up with acronyms here) in doing that.

Why are we researching this? We were curious as to how our islands are responding to the threats we are all facing globally (sad but true); the food crisis, economic crisis, environmental crisis, climate change and sea level rise to name only a few... Also, SIDS share similar physical and structural challenges to their development (UNDESA 2009a), including:

• small population,
• limited resources,
• remoteness,
• fragile land and marine ecosystems,
• susceptibility to natural disasters,
• vulnerability to external shocks,
• excessive dependence on international trade,
• high transportation and communication costs,
• disproportionately expensive public administration and infrastructure due to their small size,
• and little to no opportunity to create economies of scale (UNDESA 2009a).

A good question we had to answer in our thesis proposal was: WHY SHOULD ANYONE CARE??


As developing states, many SIDS do have high levels of poverty and a certain level of development is needed to enable people to at least live in dignity.

Their role in the Oceans!: Though remote and hindered in their development by the challenges described, SIDS still possess resources of key importance not only to their own populations, but to the world. Significant portions of the world’s oceans and seas fall within SIDS territories and the islands themselves contain a myriad of crucial ecosystems that serve as ecological corridors—linking other major ecosystems worldwide (United Nations Division for Sustainable Development 1994). An example of a marine ecosystem of vital importance closely tied to SIDS is coral reefs. Reefs are some of the most productive ecosystems in the world and support an incredibly high level of biodiversity-- including close to one third of all fish species-- while providing many other services to human populations, such as coastal protection and recreation (Moberg and Folke 1999). For this reason, coral reefs present an invaluable resource for SIDS and global economies and fisheries.

(Image: Our changing planet 2009)

Also, because of their large oceanic Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ’s), SIDS have the potential to protect and sustainably manage these and many other essential marine resources within their territories. In doing so they could play a major role in helping to maintain international fish stocks at sustainable levels, promoting marine life re-generation and preserving valuable ecosystems (such as coral reefs) for generations to come. Additionally, this could contribute in a major way to protecting the livelihoods and food sources of millions.

(Image - NOAA)

Of course, we care about the cultural diversity that they 'house'; Pacific Ocean, Caribbean, Indian Ocean... I don't even know where to start... Just go there, you'll get your dose of sun, flavours, eco and ethno tourism - just don't step on the coral !!!!

(Image: Beachcomber)

Islands must imperatively address their challenges in order to preserve their amazing treasures and play their role in the international community.

SIDS joined forces since 1991, but "on the whole, implementation of what was agreed and promised at Barbados (1994 - the Barbados Programme of Action) remains disappointing at best" says Kofi Annan in Mauritius in 2005. Hence, this is what we want to find out:

Main Research Question:

In what way can the Mauritius Strategy (MSI) help a Small Island Developing State to move strategically towards sustainability, as defined by the four Principles of Sustainability?

Secondary Research Questions:

• What are the strengths of the MSI, i.e., what does it do to help SIDS achieve full sustainability?
• What aspects of full sustainability does the MSI leave out?
• What would a Small Island Developing State need to do in order to most effectively use the MSI to move the country towards sustainability as defined by the four Principles of Sustainability?

So far we spoke to SIDS specialists from the UN, University professors in Jamaica and Mauritius, Government and NGO officials in Trinidad & Tobago, and are in contact with a few more!!

Keep you posted!

PS. Passages on corals and fisheries taken from our thesis draft intro, thanks Nat & Gabi !!

The full thesis, along with many more which may interest you, can be found here. We're in the 2011 lot. Hasta luego!

A little break

Wow!! Tough not to be excited after this week - we just finished 4 days of a training called Art of Hosting and it was crazy. Not only stoked from what was learned but also from the people we met and the network that was created. I'll post about it as soon as I can (keeping in mind we will dive into thesis work again from now on).


For now here's a brief count of my little trip last week end; a bit of a getaway also for catching up with a good ol’ buddy, Stephane Lincoln, who had just completed pilot exams in the UK.
Last thursday I made my way to Copenhagen airport to meet up with him, from where we went into Copenhagen city to drop our stuff at a hostel and go for some drinks!! It's so healthy to break the routine once in a while, and this time it was even better than usual - being able to use our 'home jargon' (not only language/ country specific, but also the kind of shit you say which only close friends can understand!!).

Friday we met Christian Wilk at the central train station. Christian and his flatmate Viola are part of the Couch-surfing network and had kindly accepted my request to stay at their place from Friday to Sunday. Open minded hosts who had travelled to Peru, Argentina, Easter Island, Asia, and more random places - that's when you exchange the good tips! One way I've learned from them to break the ice with guests: send them shopping for dinner and get them to cook! - hosting people has got to have benefits right!?!

They had more friends staying over so we played drinking games and went out both Friday and Saturday nights. In between (Saturday day) we went pacing all around Copenhagen’s centre to see more of this stunning city - the town hall, Christiania (really interesting, check it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania), the canals, royal Palace, little mermaid, etc... There’s definitely something to be said about partying a few nights in a row and still filling up days – hard work but satisfying!!

Big thanks to the hosts who made the stay really fun!

Some photos here (click):

Jessy, Chris, Dessy, Viola and Stephane 

By the way for those who don’t know about it, couch surfing is a unique way to stay almost anywhere you travel to for a few days at a time: “Since 2004, members have been using our system to come together for cultural exchange, friendship, and learning experiences. Today, over a million people who might otherwise never meet are able to share hospitality and cultural understanding” – check it out: http://www.couchsurfing.org

Sunday we went to Malmo where we met Anna and Micheal; locals and friends of Stephane, for more drinks, after which we had a good half-drunk jogg home to fight the humid cold!! Monday Anna gave us a tour of the harbour and that afternoon was time to head back to Karlskrona for thesis action and ‘Art of Hosting’ this week. More about all that very soon. Stoked of the highly sociable and action packed days since last Thursday, and looking forward to more...

Great week to all. 

Xav

Audacious ICE

Maybe 4 weeks ago things went back to a full swing of action as it hadn’t been since the Christmas break; we re-instated the dance classes, rock-climbing when possible, having a bunch of diners with a bunch of great cooks/food/conversations, drinks and parties, superb ice-walks and ice-skating. .

Photos here (click on it)

(including some stolen ones, thank you dear contributors!!)

Yes, Mauritians like their sea, also with ice! Here’s for the little story: after a few days of sub-zero temperatures I decided to venture there (on foot first) on my own. Satisfied of its thickness/ hardness I went to the local second-hand stored and picked up probably the dodgiest pair of skates you can find – whatever!, they were my size and cost 30 SEK (3 euros)!! As they were not very insulating I decided not to use them right away (didn’t have enough pairs of socks on) – but it was a beautiful day and the ice looked so good I couldn’t resist going for a long walk. Hence, I called Maja as ice-walk partner and we went for it! Direction: Trosso from the University. Although I had seen our friend Maarten skate the same path some days before, we went slow at first, plus we were hearing liquid noises which turned out to be the beers in my backpack!! Spooky, but from there on it went smoothly; had a beer on the rocks facing the university, literally ‘chilled’ on a small island, watched people sailing ice-yachts, and one guy was having a little promenade on a quad bike. An awesome day!

Some days later Canadian ‘floor-mate’ Mark (he lives in my building, same level) and I went for a proper skate. Not quite the baptism of fire but I must have looked like one goofy bastard on these things... anyway we staked from the Island Trosso where we live, to the university - that’s what you get when you study in Sweden! The feeling of gliding on this vast, outdoor, bare surface reminded me on flat-water windsurfing – pure freedom. A guy kiting stopped by us – I’m talking kite surfing kind of kite, on skates: you got to be quite confident because these things are bloody powerful.

A week later a group of us went for a longer distance towards the open water. We ran into an ice-yacht race along the way, them kept going until we could see long cracks on the ice and it was also getting softer under our blades. Big thanks Daniel Nordlund for taking the team out!

The International Skating Squad:

Mauritius, US (Josh), Sweden (Daniel), Canada (Mark & Maarten), Colombia (Alejandro)

Best served cold!

Walking around today (due to bike flat tire... again..) I thought of the taste of beer, which I no longer drink that much of, and of a poem which was on a colleague's wall in my days at Austal Service (thanks Luke Tondut!); hence the title 'best served cold'

The poem: "Beware of Good Enough":

My Child, beware of "good enough,"
It isn't made of sterling stuff.
It's something anyone can do;
It marks the many from the few.

The flaw which may escape the eye,
And temporarily get by.
Shall weaken underneath the strain,
And wreck the ship, the car, or plane.

With "good enough," the car breaks down,
And one falls short of high renown.
My child, remember and be wise,
In "good enough", disaster lies.

With "good enough," the shirkers stop,
In every factory and shop;
With "good enough," the failures rest,
And lose the one who gives the best.

Who stops at "good enough" shall find,
Success has left them far behind.
For this is true of you and your stuff--
Only the best is "good enough."

- Unknown Author (that's what it says everywhere I found it).

A beautiful illustration of greatness for the day: Bernini's "Pluto and Proserpina"  - unbelievable marble sculpture

Here's a detail:

Photos taken from Giampaolo Cammarota's blog: http://mauisurfreport.blogspot.com/

(this guy's my writing style's inspiration!)

On another note, how great would it be if people took more joy out of creativity rather than chasing satisfaction from whatever is already on offer? Only a few people get to create consumer goods, be on TV, and come up with things for a living; they're the ones having the most fun, and you're their at their mercy!!! - well, thankfully not :P

Great week to all!

Sustainability in Business!

Hi all! Thank you for your patience, you have deserved a well worked through post!
This is the article I was talking about before the festive season, regarding a project we did for integrating sustainability in the business of a Swedish ship builder: Kockums AB.

(Image http://www.kockums.se/)

We were asked by the company to provide a 2-page summary of our project report, for easy communication within top-management. We were also asked to produce an article for their internal newsletter, which we then proposed to adapt for our university newsletter, 'Trunk and Branches'. I'll post an update on all that soon, for now I just wanted to share it here (I have permission), as it was a really cool project with a really cool team:

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Kockums catches the waves of the future, today!
By Xavier Koenig – Master’s Student, Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability

Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH)

Last November Reed Evans, Isabella Wagner and Ricardo Garcia went knocking on Kockums door in Karlskrona for one of our university assignments. They asked if I would join them, and I jumped onboard when I heard of the company! Kockums AB designs, builds and maintains submarines, naval surface ships and commercial vessels in Karlskrona, Malmö and Muskö with 1000 employees.

Since customers and authorities are growing concerned about sustainability issues, Environmental Manager Rolf Petersson received us to hear more about our project. It involves a process designed to help organisations change from ‘business as usual’ to progressive sustainability oriented operations.

Full sustainability is defined with four principles:

In a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing:

1. Concentrations of substances extracted from the Earth‘s crust,

2. Concentrations of substances produced by society,

3. Degradation by physical means,

And in this society,

4. People are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their needs.

Seeing value in the project, Rolf spoke to Mats Grähs, Head of the Composite Department, and they offered us the possibility to work on the CarboCAT® - a vessel designed primarily for offshore wind-farm maintenance services. With a time frame of five weeks for this assignment, we agreed to focus on the composite construction of this type of vessel.

Our team then met Rolf, Mats and Arne Lindstöl (CarboCAT® Project team) to kick-start the project. Mats scheduled a four hour walk-through of the composite workshop for our baseline assessment. We went through every stage of the production process asking questions about everything. Isabella, also a Masters Student in Energy Engineering, was especially intrigued by the heating system and energy aspects – “there are so many losses!” she noticed. 

With answers to our extensive list, we went off for hours of research and analysis. I was glad to contribute my ship building knowledge to help keep the team in check while we assessed the sustainability performance of the CarboCAT®’s production. From his project management experience, Ricardo structured a template to process the information gathered – materials sources, wastes, recycling, alternatives, energy sources, social, economical and environmental risks, and more...

The next step? - Brainstorming with Rolf, Mats and Tim Hultberg (Systems Specialist/ Product Development) to think of possible actions to move the composite production towards sustainability. Reminder on the rules of brainstorming: as many ideas as possible, no judgement, crazy ideas encouraged! As Dr. Karl Henrick Robèrt puts it; “what is currently realistic is only allowed to influence the pace of transition, not its direction”. From this process we created a list of 142 actions.

Of course some were completely unrealistic in the short term, meaning that we need to be strategic to make progress! We prioritized the actions with a set of criteria including these three key questions: Will it take us in the right direction – viable and sustainable? Is it a flexible platform for future actions - not a dead end? Does it provide enough ROI (financial, social and environmental) to fuel further action?

For the immediate future, it is clear that the Toyota Production System currently being implemented is a smart move – efficiency and waste reduction will provide significant savings. Later, collaboration with suppliers may help develop materials for which price is not dependant on the oil market, and also materials that are not harmful to the environment. Ultimately, Kockums may build ships which benefit society beyond their operational services.

Being a leader in sustainability has an immense business potential; “As we climb mount Sustainability, with the four principles at the top, we are doing better than ever on bottom line business. This is not at the cost of social or ecological systems, but at the cost of our competitors who still haven’t got it” - Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface Inc.

Within the Strategic Management process, a visioning stage is critical. Reed was particularly keen to conduct a workshop, knowing the importance of a clear vision and high goals for a company from her consulting experience. The goal is to create an attractive vision of the future guided by the sustainability principles; only then can we be strategic to realise it. All stakeholders must be onboard to co-create this vision and help the continuous improvement of the strategic plan towards success. Unfortunately this step was not possible within our timeframe; however this work has been a unique experience, especially thanks to Kockums support.

The BTH student team would like to warmly thank Rolf Petersson, Mats Grähs, Tim Hultberg and Arne Lindstöl for their friendly collaboration, and wishes Kockums all the very best in their Sustainability journey.

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PS: I'm liking writing, so if you have comments or feedback I'd love to hear it. Feel free to use the comments window or shoot me an email. Tack!

Sustainability: Definition

Lately I haven’t really had a chance to write about sustainability, considering everything that was happening. So you may still be wondering what the hell we are talking about here in this little corner of Sweden!!! (oh and sustainability is big everywhere else in Sweden, just so you know)

Taking another look at the posts entitled “sustainability stuff Part I and Part II” will help understand the context and why it’s important for us all to know about sustainability.

I’ll lay it out the way we were taught here: pretend you wanted to make the planet completely sterile, or at least deplete the biosphere enough so that very few species would survive. You would have to understand that the conditions allowing life (as it is today) took billions of years to create – then take action:

1. Heavy metals (mercury, uranium, etc..) are now deep underground, CO2 in the atmosphere was absorbed by plants which are now crude oil (also trapped underground), to name a few. You would want to bring the metals back up, and burn the oil to restore the extremely harsh atmosphere Earth had when young.
2. With the current technology, we are able to create chemical compounds that nature has never encountered before – pesticides, plastics, refined fuels, and other potent artificial substances. Just spread them everywhere.
3. With current technology also, it is possible to physically destroy the environment: using machines and other means: harvest, cut, clear, dig, bomb...
4. Finally if you want to get rid of people (not cool writing this kind of stuff), not only you would do all of the above, but you will restrict people in their communications, access to what they need, force them to work more than they should, to rely on less and less resources etc...

Phew... that sounds really dark and sadist. I don’t think anyone was really upset when Dr. Karl Henrik Robert talked about this, but then he’s a great speaker. See any correlation with our Society’s operation? No one actually WANTS to do any of the above (maybe in some rare cases), yet this is what the global society is doing. Everybody brings their ever-so-small contribution to making one big problem – as described in previous posts this un-sustainable behaviour is everywhere.

Now the good news:

In a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing:

1. Concentration of substances extracted from the Earth’s crust
2. Concentration of substances produced by society
3. Degradation by physical means

And, in this society;

     4. People are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their needs.

These four points are called the Sustainability Principles, as defined by the organisation The Natural Step. They keep us in check when planning for sustainable development.

Dr. Robert clearly explains the Natural Step's take on sustainability in this video:

Finally, our colleague Fúnmiláyò Akinòsì from Nigeria has contextualised her understanding in an article that I wouldn’t try to match; a good read published in The Guardian, Nigeria 19th November 2010 – enjoy!:

http://anotherhummingbird.blogspot.com/

2010 to 2011 - Spiced up continuity

Happy New Year and best wishies to all of you!! It’s been 2 weeks I know.

For the news since the pre-Christmas post, we chilled here (literally) after some intense weeks of studying, as you know it is our occupation - but seriously people must age slower here cause they live in the cold half their life... Anyway we had various gatherings, a Christmas dinner with some of us who had not fled Karlskrona, and during these days in can’t remember exactly what we did... taking it easy, seeing some spots we hadn’t seen.

Many of us MSLS people went travelling to France, Germany, Turkey, the UK, some even going home to the US or Canada. Being in Europe is a great opportunity to see so much; by the amount of history, cultures (etc, you know the drill) and short travel times. Having been in Paris in August 2010, I decided to go check out Berlin as my French/German friend Myriam said a while back that it would be a good plan... and BAM! It was!!

A few days spent in the German capital - WWII and cold war memorials, beers and fireworks at every corner, night clubs with music which is not the usual commercial junk, great local guide host and friends (thanks Anne-Lise and Mimi!), huge NYE celebration with hundreds of thousands of people, bus through northern Germany, ferry to Denmark then bus to Copenhagen, train to Karlskrona Sweden - Hello 2011!!!

Photos speak a thousand words so see this album by clicking on this link (suivez ce lien):

http://picasaweb.google.com/105026054672533308619/2010to2011InBerlin?authkey=Gv1sRgCODgjP3Zh5Lm0AE#

Also, check out what others have been up to on their blogs: Fúnmiláyò Akinòsì (Nigeria), Cindy Sundborg (USA), Christopher Baan (The Netherlands) and Nathaniel Koloc (USA). 

Link (lien):

http://www.bth.se/ste/tmslm.nsf/pages/5fa63d4d87c625dcc12577ad0050f1a5!OpenDocument

Activity kicked in very quickly when we got back to K-town, thesis draft proposal due, 'Advanced Societal Leadership' project and presentation due, Strategic Management exam, and other reports. It has settled a bit now so I'll post about latest developments soon (I hope!).

I'll leave you with this amazing video: faithless - 'I want more' - YES, if anything I want more skills!!

Looking forward to hear some news from you guys after the holiday hangover in gone!
Hasta Luego!
Xav