In 2020, the number of publicly available charging stations for electric cars in China far outnumbered those in other countries, but that could change soon. In early September, oil company Shell announced it plans to build 50,000 on-street charging stations in the U.K. over the next four years. And in October, governors from five different states (and different political parties) agreed to build a network of charging stations throughout the American Midwest. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has also unveiled plans to install the country’s first stretch of wireless charging roads. The inductive technology doesn’t require drivers to stop at a charging station, since it recharges your batteries as you ride.

Shipping goes green.

Now that electric cars are primed to take over the highways, what’s next? This summer, Denmark’s A.P. Moller-Maersk, the world’s largest shipping firm, announced it would spend US$1.4 billion on eight new vessels that can run on “carbon neutral” methanol instead of the dirty “bunker fuel” used by container ships. Maersk’s head of decarbonization, Morten Bo Christiansen, said in a video message, “Once they are all out there sailing on green methanol, they will save a million tons of CO2 every year.” Of course, securing green methanol is the next challenge. So far, the company has commissioned enough e-methanol (to be made using renewable energy and carbon dioxide captured from agricultural waste) to run one prototype ship, but it plans to have all ships carbon-neutral by 2030.

Look to the skies.

Global courier company DHL Express has ordered 12 fully electric cargo planes. The supplier is Seattle-based Eviation, whose “Alice” line of commuter planes should soon become the world’s first commercially produced electric aircraft. Eviation, formed by a group of airplane aficionados from Israel, the U.S. and Canada, says the Alice cargo jet, flown by a single pilot, will carry loads weighing up to 1,200 kilograms, with a maximum range of 800 kilometres. Eviation expects to begin deliveries to DHL in 2024, hoping to kick off “a new era with electric aircraft.”

IKEA ramps up its clean energy business.

Solar panels produced almost a 10th of the EU’s electricity in June and July, and IKEA wants to sell some of that power. The retail giant already sells solar panels in 10 other countries, but as of September, it began selling renewable energy (similar to the way an electric utility would) to customers in its home market of Sweden. The power, generated by certified wind and solar parks, comes from Nord Pool, Europe’s leading power market. Homeowners manage their energy use with an app. Those with their own solar generating systems can also track their energy production, and surplus power can be sold back to the grid. IKEA Sweden’s head of sustainability says the retailer hopes to offer energy platforms – including the solar panels – in all of its markets by 2025.

Ich bin ein vegetarian.

Accounting for 15% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, the meat and dairy sector is overdue for disruption. The latest blow comes from Berlin university students, who petitioned their schools to offer more sustainable meals. Now, four universities that run 34 cafeterias across Berlin have announced they are cutting back meat dishes by 96%. Starting in October, the dining halls offer 68% vegan options, 28% vegetarian options and 2% fish options. They will offer a single meat option four days per week.

Beyond everything.

In less than 10 years, Los Angeles–based Beyond Meat has grown into a US$500-million-a-year giant selling plant-based alternatives to chicken, beef and pork. But what matters most is where the firm is headed next. Beyond has filed 108 trademark applications for the next generation of low-carbon protein products, including Beyond Crab, Beyond Shrimp, Beyond Eggs, Beyond Milk and even Beyond Jerky. Silicon Valley–based CB Insights reports that by mid-2021, investors in plant-based products had already poured more than US$1 billion into alternative protein companies, three times as much as was invested in all of 2020. Maybe one will finally crack the elusive plant-based filet mignon market.

The post What’s next: The latest green innovations and milestones that give us hope appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Carl Benz struggled to find his groove as a young man before designing a single-cylinder gasoline engine that he fired up for the first time in the German town of Mannheim on New Year’s Eve 1879. Seven years later, Benz fitted an improved version of the engine to a rickety three-wheeled vehicle, and his Benz Patent Motor Car model no. 1, generally credited as the world’s first automobile, took to the road.

More than 130 years later, the luxury brand that bears Benz’s name is pulling out the stops to make its mark on a new generation of vehicles. Mercedes-Benz is now in the vanguard of mainline carmakers hoping to topple Tesla from its perch as the world’s top electric vehicle (EV) producer.

Mercedes’s parent, Daimler, announced in July that every new platform will be EV-only by 2025. It plans to spend virtually nothing after that on gasoline engines, instead pouring €40 billion into a predominantly, and perhaps entirely, electric lineup by the end of the decade.

“The EV shift is picking up speed, especially in the luxury segment where Mercedes belongs,” Mercedes chairman Ola Källenius said in early September as he unveiled four new electric SUVs and sedans. “That’s why we’re accelerating from EV-first to EV-only.” The new models include a super-luxury Maybach SUV, expected to sell for more than US$200,000. Mercedes also plans to build eight EV battery plants with various partners around the world – four in Europe, three in China and one in the U.S. It expects that EVs and hybrids will contribute at least half its sales by 2025.

Getting there will not be easy. Only a handful of countries appear poised to reach that target. In Norway, all-electric cars made up 60% of the total market in the first eight months of 2021. But EVs still account for just 3% of U.S. car sales. One big challenge facing Mercedes – and every other carmaker – is a shortage of charging stations in North America.

Unlike some of its rivals, Mercedes has wisely stopped short of forecasting when its last gas-powered car will roll off the assembly line.

General Motors aims to be all-electric by 2035, and Volvo (owned by China’s Geely) has set an even earlier target of 2030. The three Detroit-based carmakers – GM, Ford and Chrysler – have cautioned that their commitment to EV sales targets hinges on government funding for manufacturing, supply-chain research and development, buyer incentives and a national charging network. There is no guarantee those conditions will be met.

Zero: Toyota

Toyota has, by and large, been an amazing success story since it began life as a maker of textile looms in the 1930s. The company overtook General Motors in 2007 as the world’s top-selling carmaker. Its Prius hybrid pioneered the move to battery-powered vehicles, and Toyota’s company culture of kaizen, or continuous improvement, has become a mantra for managers around the world.

But the Japanese carmaker now risks tarnishing its reputation with an aggressive effort to slow the rollout of EVs in favour of its own preferred technologies: hybrids and zero-emission hydrogen cells.

Toyota has a mixed record on action to combat climate change. Earlier this year, the company, together with several other carmakers, dropped its support of Trump-era legal action against California’s moves to set stricter fuel-economy and greenhouse-gas emission standards than the federal government.

But self-interest has appeared to be paramount. Toyota remains the leader in the hybrid market, and the company has invested heavily in hydrogen fuel cells. The cauldron at the recent Tokyo Olympics was powered by hydrogen in a nod to Toyota’s role as one of the Games’ main sponsors.

Company president Akio Toyoda pushed back earlier this year against Japanese measures to regulate gasoline and diesel engines on the grounds that such restrictions would limit technology options. In recent years, Toyota has also assailed policies mandating electrification, opposed a carbon tax, and questioned the cost of extra power supplies and infrastructure needed to charge EVs.

Instead, Toyota is pushing for what it describes as “a portfolio of products with advanced, alternative-fuel and zero-emission powertrain technologies.” It aims to roll out 70 “electrified” models by 2025 using a combination of power trains. However, its favoured technology – hydrogen cells – has yet to prove itself. Critics argue, among other points, that fuel cells wear out fast and are hard to recharge, and that hydrogen is expensive to produce and distribute.

InfluenceMap, a U.K. think tank that tracks corporate action on climate change, concludes that “despite positive top-line messaging on climate, [Toyota] has consistently engaged in opposition to regulatory efforts to increase the stringency of emissions and fuel economy standards.” What’s more, “Toyota has at times been highly negative on policy mandating the electrification of the automotive sector, appearing concerned to promote an extended role for hybrid vehicles.”

Toyota scores a “D-” in InfluenceMap’s rankings, the lowest of any major carmaker. Given its achievements in so many other spheres, it can surely do better.

The post Heroes and Zeros: Mercedes-Benz vs. Toyota appeared first on Corporate Knights.

In 2013, the University of Victoria’s Peter B. Gustavson School of Business founded the Indigenous Advancement of Cultural Entrepreneurship (I-ACE) program. The program bills itself as Canada’s only Indigenous co-designed entrepreneurship program delivered in First Nations communities and centred on their priorities. Since then, the school has worked with 67 Indigenous communities in British Columbia, producing 604 graduates and 200 start-ups.

“We only do these programs when we are invited in to do so by communities or nations,” says Brent Mainprize, a Gustavson professor of entrepreneurship and Indigenous economic development, of I-ACE. “We work hand in hand with the community and nation to find [external] resources so we [are] not taxing a nation’s budget.”

Former Haida Nation council president Miles Richardson says the success of I-ACE, which initially received $1 million in funding from the Bank of Montreal, demonstrates that business schools “need to be flexible in their approach and delivery.” As chair of the National Consortium for Indigenous Economic Development, a University of Victoria research initiative with Indigenous governments, Richardson says First Nations communities are seeking a productive economic relationship with Canada.

“To do that, our people need to be trained and educated, and to gain capacity we have to do it in a way that is consistent with our values and who we are as a people,” says Richardson.

In Australia, the University of Melbourne, in partnership with Indigenous leaders, designed a culturally safe on-campus executive education program for Indigenous entrepreneurs in 2012. The university’s Faculty of Business and Economics added a graduate certificate in Indigenous leadership in 2019 that can ladder into degree programs.

“We are creating as many pathways into business school as we can for Indigenous people,” says Mitch Hibbens, a Wiradjuri tribe member and program director of the entrepreneur program.

Sometimes, topics define the relationship.

Recent specialty programs at the Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University, which include certificates in tribal leadership, gaming leadership, and tribal finance and accounting, came at the request of the 38-tribe Oklahoma Tribal Finance Consortium.

“A growing number of tribes need assistance with finances and accounting,” says Julie Weathers, director of Spears’s Center for Executive and Professional Development. “The people in those positions rotate in and out, and so there is a lot of learning that needs to take place quickly.”

Vancouver Island University (VIU), with Heiltsuk Tribal College and North Island College, delivers a seven-month Indigenous Ecotourism Training Program for eligible students supported by their local bands. The program’s instructors travel to Indigenous communities to teach. VIU also offers other credentials that can feed into a business diploma or degree.

At Manitoba’s Assiniboine College, located on the traditional territories of Treaty 1 and Treaty 2 First Nations, the business faculty delivers an in-community advanced diploma in Indigenous financial management. “The more we can include the community in [the] development of the course, the more meaningful it will be for the students who eventually take the courses,” says business dean Bobbie Robertson.

That responsiveness is essential, says Mike Henry, dean of business at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, which works with the Indigenous-led Tulo Centre of Indigenous Economics to design courses in demand by local communities.

“Indigenous communities are taking control and saying, ‘This is what we need,’” he says. “Non-Indigenous communities are starting to listen closer and respond to what Indigenous leaders need, not what we think they need, to manage their own affairs.”

Jennifer Lewington is an intrepid reporter and writes regularly on many topics, including business school news.

The post Class is in session for Indigenous entrepreneurs appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Last week, Senator Leo Housakos introduced a private member’s bill in the Canadian Senate that, if passed, would ban all imports from the region.

Joining a long list of human rights groups, governments and others, Amnesty International this summer accused the Chinese government of carrying out massive, systematic abuses against two million Muslims in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in order to “forcibly assimilate [them] into a homogenous Chinese nation possessing a unified language, culture, and unwavering loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced in September that the EU will ban forced-labour products after several German clothing companies were accused of profiting from Uyghur labour in Xinjiang. 

In July, the U.S. Senate passed a bill banning all products made in Xinjiang. And this fall, Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff called for the U.S. to completely shed its reliance on Chinese supply chains to build up its solar energy capability. The global production of solar panels has been linked to forced labour in Xinjiang, where 45% of the world’s polysilicon supply (a key component in solar panels) is manufactured.

The Canadian government has been warning companies to be wary of suppliers that may be linked to China’s oppression of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims since earlier this year. 

The Chinese government has also been accused of herding ethnic minorities into forced labour camps as part of a larger program of ethnic cleansing – allegations the country denies. Canada and many other nations prohibit the import of goods produced by forced labour, and companies linked to the repression of workers in or from Xinjiang risk their financial and reputational futures. 

The authoritarian regime’s position as the world’s largest manufacturer has often left the rest of the world torn between opposing China’s human-rights abuses and jeopardizing trade relations. But Canadian business leaders can count on one political reality: failure to police your supply chain in Xinjiang could mean you’re helping to perpetuate these abuses, even unintentionally.

This isn’t just a problem for companies buying supplies from Xinjiang. Reports indicate that the government has relocated Uyghur labourers and other ethnic minorities to factories across the People’s Republic, meaning forced labour could be a component of any Chinese supply chain.

Canada is taking these issues seriously. Last fall, a parliamentary subcommittee called China’s mistreatment of Xinjiang’s Muslims “the largest mass detention of a minority community since the Holocaust.” In February, the House of Commons declared China’s actions “genocide.” While members of the federal Cabinet abstained from that vote, a month later Ottawa imposed sanctions on China for the first time since the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square. The sanctions prohibit Canadians from dealing with named Xinjiang officials or the state-owned company that runs the region’s detention camps.

Last year, the federal government also enacted a ban on importing products made with forced labour, as part of its obligations under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. The Globe and Mail reports that the Canada Border Services Agency has since blocked at least one shipment from China under the prohibition. Housakos says his bill, which would impose a blanket geographic ban on products from Xinjiang, would make it easier for officials to confiscate problematic shipments. 

Researchers say forced labour often occurs at the early stages of the supply chain. The highest risk likely involves products made with cotton, although other dodgy categories include electronics, chemicals, cars, tomato products and solar panel components. In mid-November, a CBC Marketplace investigation conducted in partnership with The Guardian and the Investigative Reporting Project Italy revealed that major food brands, such as Nestlé, Del Monte and Unilever, had bought tomatoes for their products from companies in Xinjiang and processed them in intermediary countries. 

A recent report by researchers at Sheffield Hallam University in England also found that more than 100 big retailers, including Lululemon, Banana Republic, Costco, H&M and others, were at high risk of having cotton from Xinjiang in their products.

How can businesses reduce their risks? “Companies should be revising their sanctions policies and procedures,” advises Toronto law firm McCarthy Tétrault. The firm warns that companies need to be aware of who is on Canada’s sanctions list and what they own. Companies are urged to take advantage of the federal Trade Commissioner Service, part of Global Affairs Canada, which can offer updated advice on due diligence and risk mitigation related to forced labour. 

All importers are advised to develop their own expertise in supply-chain monitoring.

The post Is China’s forced Uyghur labour hiding in Canadian supply chains? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

It was a major reversal for Bacow, who has dodged protesters’ demands that Harvard’s US$40-billion worth of endowment funds divest all traces of oil, gas and coal investments. By the end of 2020, Harvard Management Co. (HMC), custodian of the world’s largest endowment, had actually reduced fossil fuel investments from 11% of its portfolio in 2008 to 2%. But as Bacow, a one-time environmental studies professor, wrote in an article for the independent Harvard Magazine, “I, like my predecessors, believe that engaging with industry to confront the challenge of climate change is ultimately a sounder and more effective approach.”

That familiar brush-off was finally retired on September 9, when Bacow announced that HMC no longer directly owns any fossil fuel investments and “does not intend to make such investments in the future.” He conceded that HMC retains some “legacy investments” through limited partnerships but said those activities “are in runoff mode and will end as these partnerships are liquidated.” Looking ahead, he promised, “HMC is building a portfolio of investments in funds that support the transition to a green economy.”

The announcement came just two days after the nine-year-old Divest Harvard movement held a climate rally for returning students. Against the backdrop of floods, forest fires and hurricanes then devastating American communities, the students carried a massive blue banner symbolizing the rising ocean tides that they said are coming to Harvard’s door.

Activist students hailed Bacow’s reversal. “It’s a massive victory for our community, the climate movement, and the world – and a strike against the power of the fossil fuel industry,” Divest Harvard reported.

The organization framed Bacow’s statement as a milestone in the climate wars. “From the beginning, Harvard has sought to duck, dodge, and deny: claiming that fossil fuel stocks were necessary for profit, claiming that the endowment shouldn’t play a role in fighting climate change, and even claiming that fossil fuel companies are part of the solution. And the fossil fuel companies have loved this, constantly holding up Harvard’s embrace of the industry as a vindication of the industry’s unjust and unsustainable vision for the future.”

Author Bill McKibben, a Harvard grad who founded the climate campaign group 350.org, said he thought Harvard would never divest. “That it finally did is an enormous tribute to generations of Harvard students who have never let up, and to faculty and alumni who backed them up.” Still, McKibben believes Harvard’s “obstinance” in refusing to divest has cost the university prestige and money.

Spoiling the party was John S. Rosenberg, editor-in-chief of Harvard Magazine. He pointed out that Bacow’s statement never actually used the term “divestment” and that 60% of Harvard’s endowment is entrusted to private equity and hedge funds – independent investors who may have different investment strategies. If Harvard has instructed any such partners to avoid all investments that support the fossil fuel industry, Rosenberg wrote, “it has not said so.”

Later, Harvard prof Naomi Oreskes and Sofia Andrade of Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard penned an op-ed in The New York Times that clarified things somewhat. America’s oldest university will divest an estimated $838 million of its $42-billion endowment from fossil fuels, which they called “the first step toward a just transition to a greener future.”

Also this fall, Boston University and the University of Minnesota joined more than 1,300 schools and institutions that have divested, at least in part, from the fossil fuel industry.

Some will dismiss divestment as symbolic, said Oreskes and Andrade. Regardless, symbols matter, they wrote: “Harvard’s divestment is a signal to other investors that as the planet burns, finance must not stand with the arsonists.”

The post Harvard gives in to pressures to divest from fossil fuels (mostly) appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The process is called fuel switching. As technologies such as electric vehicles and electric heat pumps gain market acceptance, fuel switching seems increasingly plausible. “We have to do this really, really quickly,” says Simon Fraser University adjunct professor Chris Bataille, a climate policy analyst with IDDRI (L’Institut du développement durable et des relations internationales/Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations), a Paris-based think tank.

In a cold country, the opportunities around the electrification of space heating in particular are critical. Heating and cooling buildings accounts for 12.4% of Canada’s carbon releases, but in some big cities, such as Toronto, natural gas used to heat buildings accounts for half of all emissions. (Nationally, 45% of all natural gas is used for residential and commercial buildings.) The reason? Thousands of kilometres of natural gas lines spider under big city streets, and the gas they carry, in some jurisdictions, is cheaper than electricity.

Decarbonizing using electric space and water heating

Though large swaths of Canada are hooked on natural gas, it’s become quite straightforward for consumers to switch to high-efficiency electric space and water heating. Heat pumps are widely available through home reno retailers or HVAC contractors. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), 20 million heat pumps were purchased globally in 2020. “Growth is evident across all primary heating markets – North America, Europe and Northern Asia,” notes the IEA. “Although heat pumps have even become the most common technology in newly built houses in many countries, they meet only 5% of global building heating demand.” Across Canada, there are almost 800,000 heat pumps, and those totals have risen steadily for a decade, especially in Ontario and Quebec, according to Canada Energy Regulator data.

However, there are few policy incentives or regulatory mechanisms designed to accelerate the shift from natural gas to electric heat, so the decision remains, primarily, a consumer choice. In Canada, homeowners can access federal green-energy retrofit grants or subsidies to help cover the cost of these devices. Heat pumps range from a few thousand dollars to more than $10,000, depending on home size and other factors. High-efficiency gas furnaces run from $3,000 to more than $6,000; gas distributors also rent them. Stepped increases in carbon pricing will narrow the gap between gas and hydro rates by hundreds of dollars. Heat pumps, moreover, yield energy savings because of their efficiency.

Gas utilities continue to invest hundreds of millions of dollars each year in expanding and renewing gas distribution infrastructure.

-Bryan Purcell, vice-president of policy and programs, The Atmospheric Fund

One of the daunting financial impediments in the take-up of electric space and water heating has to do with the issue of stranded assets. If governments created incentives for homeowners or building managers to switch to electric heat, what happens to all the capital investment that’s gone into building gas distribution networks over the past 30 years? After all, in some regions, energy regulators sought to convert home heating to natural gas beginning in the 1980s because it was cleaner than oil and coal. Today, those assets sit on the balance sheets of giants like Enbridge, and governments are reluctant to impose regulations that abruptly turn them into liabilities. (Enbridge’s latest financial statements value its gas mains and related services at $12.5 billion, equivalent to about 10% of the book value of its total assets.)

Yet the complexity of fuel switching extends beyond the balance sheet. If large numbers of homeowners moved to electric heat, they would place a huge amount of additional pressure on existing electrical grids, especially in cities during peak times, says Richard Carlson, director of energy policy at Pollution Probe. “I just don’t see how the electrical systems in an urban area can be upgraded,” he says.

The solution to this Rubik’s Cube requires regulatory innovation, investment in renewable generation, and a sense of urgency. “The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole,” says Bryan Purcell, The Atmospheric Fund’s vice-president of policy and programs, “is to stop digging. Gas utilities continue to invest hundreds of millions of dollars each year in expanding and renewing gas distribution infrastructure, compounding the risk of stranded assets and related financial disruptions. They will continue to do so until there are clear enough policy signals for a transition off of fossil gas.”

The potential for using biogas

Purcell and others believe one near-term fix is for governments to mandate that gas companies increase the use of renewable natural gas (RNG), created using methane emissions from water treatment plants, landfills or agricultural waste. In B.C. since 2017, for example, regulators have allowed energy distributors to add up to 5% RNG to their natural gas. “Getting a significant share of RNG in the gas supply as rapidly as possible can extend the useful life of gas infrastructure without compromising our climate commitments,” Purcell says.

Some environmentalists disagree: “There may be a niche role for truly low-carbon biogas for things that can’t easily be electrified,” says Greenpeace Canada energy analyst Keith Stewart, “but when it comes to space heating, biogas represents an effort by incumbents to maintain infrastructure lock-in by blocking the alternative[s] that can achieve zero GHGs.”

Bataille and Carlson feel the real solution is structural. Progress on fuel-switching, they say, will come from combining electricity and natural gas policy and regulation into a single, integrated system focused on managing thermal energy so as to minimize emissions. “We have to stop regulating gas and electricity separately,” says Bataille.

Case in point: Gas distribution companies aren’t mandated to provide financial incentives for customers to replace end-of-life gas furnaces with electric heat pumps. However, in Quebec earlier this summer, Hydro-Québec and Énergir, a gas utility, announced a partnership to provide incentives to customers who rely exclusively on natural gas for heating to transition to hybrid systems. These use heat pumps that switch to gas in very cold conditions. (The efficiency of cold-climate heat pumps drops off at very low temperatures, particularly below -20°C.) The program is projected to cut carbon emissions from buildings by 540,000 tonnes by 2030. “Quebec is one of the first places doing this,” says Bataille.

Industry pushing back against bans on gas hook-ups

There are other important policy levers. For example, municipalities could require developers of new buildings to install all-electric heating systems instead of hook-ups to the gas grid. Beginning with Berkeley in 2019, municipalities in California, Colorado and Washington State, as well as parts of the U.K., have been banning gas connections for new-build structures.

Given that much of the built-form that will exist in 2050 hasn’t been constructed yet, such regulations represent high-impact emission reduction policies. But they’ve also attracted opposition from the gas lobby. According to a recent account in the Washington Post, pro-gas front organizations backed by the industry, as well as unions representing pipefitters and other skilled trades, have created war chests to fight these mandates.

In Canada, the Canadian Gas Association is also ramping up its own scare-tactics campaign: “Policy-driven electrification,” a brief warned, “could increase the total energy cost by between $580 billion to $1.4 trillion over the 30-year period between 2020 and 2050.”

University of Toronto Scarborough political scientist Matthew Hoffmann, co-director of the Munk School’s Environmental Governance Lab, says such reforms point to the importance of building social and economic constituencies around fuel switching. Measures like mandated disconnects, he says, “have the possibility of blunting political opposition.”

Pollution Probe’s Carlson, however, asserts that the real shortcoming isn’t the lack of adequate regulation, but rather the dearth of a thermal energy strategy that lays out the policy framework at a high level. Neither Ottawa nor the provinces have developed long-term plans linking the expansion of renewable electricity to fuel-switching incentives and gas disconnects. Not coincidentally, carbon reduction in Canada’s buildings sector has been stalled for years. As Carlson notes, even recent changes – new energy-efficient building codes, for example – will yield only modest improvements by 2030.

Time, of course, has become the enemy, especially in complex, interconnected systems like building energy, which depend on massive networks of infrastructure and therefore do not turn on a dime. For that reason, advocates say policy-makers must immediately begin designing and implementing policies that lay out a clear path to electric heat but don’t bankrupt the natural gas sector, whose distribution networks will still be needed to supply thermal energy to difficult-to-electrify sectors, like heavy manufacturing.

Hoffmann adds that governments should deploy all of these approaches instead of dabbling in pilot projects or incremental reforms. “We’re at the level of crisis where there isn’t time to be making that kind of choice anymore,” he says. “We’re in a both/and world now.”

Toronto journalist John Lorinc writes about cities, sustainability and business.

The post Putting out the fire: How to cleanly heat a cold country that’s hooked on natural gas appeared first on Corporate Knights.

In the lead-up to Canada’s federal election this fall, the Chicken Farmers of Canada (CFC) – an industry lobbying and marketing group that represents 2,800 chicken farmers – was busy promoting chicken as a climate solution. In an August 19 tweet, CFC pushed the idea that compared to the rest of the world, “Canadian chicken has one of the lowest carbon footprints of all.”

Around the same time, CFC released a poll by Abacus Data it had commissioned that found 82% of Canadians support the supply management system that chicken farming operates under. The industry group heralded the survey of 5,000 Canadians as proof that the “Canadian chicken sector is very popular heading into a federal election” and that “party support for the chicken sector will bolster the vote strength, attract opposition voters, and bring in swing voters.”

The tweet and survey were part of a larger effort by the chicken industry to push its products as the sustainable protein of choice for many Canadians. CFC first created a campaign called Let’s Talk Chicken to promote its Sustainability Excellence Commitment program a few years back. More recently, the group published a “Life Cycle Assessment” that claimed the carbon footprint of Canadian chicken decreased by 37% over the last four decades “due to major productivity gains and improvements in the feed to gain conversion ratio.”

But what exactly are these gains in productivity, and what does that feed conversion ratio mean for the environment? While raising chickens in our own country might sound wholesome on a food label, what, if anything, does that translate into for the animals and the planet?

Low-carbon poultry?

Research suggests that minimizing or forgoing meat consumption, in particular red meat, can be a key component to keeping climate chaos at bay. And polls show Canadians are taking that to heart, with one in four having considered cutting their beef consumption in the last year, according to a 2021 survey by the Agri-food Analytics Lab and Dalhousie University. However, as beef consumption in Canada has decreased in recent years, chicken consumption has boomed by almost 20 pounds per person since 1998. As of 2020, chicken is the most consumed meat in Canada. Of the nearly 834 million land animals slaughtered in Canada in 2019, around 90% of those are meat chickens. So how has CFC managed to make farming those hundreds of millions of animals more eco-efficient?

“It just means they are cramming more chickens into barns,” says Nicholas Carter, an environmental researcher and the co-founder of Plant Based Data.

Being small and monogastric (having one stomach rather than multiple methane-belching stomachs, as cows do) naturally lessens chickens’ impact. Chickens also require less food, water and space per animal. However, in an effort to boost both profit and efficiency, modern animal agriculture has become increasingly industrialized and intensified. Though the number of chicken farms in Canada has dropped since 1976, from more than 99,000 to fewer than 3,000, the average number of chickens per farm has increased sevenfold, from fewer than 900 to more than 6,000 today. Growing a greater number of animals faster for maximum yield has been the central goal. This increase in efficiency has brought with it an additional bonus: a reduced carbon footprint. This is thanks to faster-growing birds who require less food and water and produce less waste over their shorter life-spans. Canadian chicken farmers now claim to have a smaller carbon footprint than the majority of the world’s chicken farmers.

Despite efficiency gains made by using fast-growing birds, chickens remain the greatest consumers of feed crops such as soy, corn and other grains on the planet, according to WWF, requiring copious amounts of land and water. The CFC acknowledges that “feed production contributes to half of the total carbon footprint” and that “GHG emissions are mainly caused by fertilizers and diesel use to produce feed crops.” The association also points out that 62% of the entire sector’s total energy use comes from renewable sources, but that’s not because barns are powered by solar panels. The group clarifies that “chicken feed accounts for the bulk of renewable energy consumption” – meaning the grains being fed to chickens are being counted as a renewable energy source for the sector because the sun that helps the crops used as chicken feed grow is a renewable input.

Mounting calls for better chicken

Sylvain Charlebois, the director of Dalhousie University’s Agri-food Analytics Lab, says public pressure and changing expectations have forced the chicken industry to put more focus on sustainability. But, he adds, “more Canadians are conflicted these days. While they benefit from industrialized farming, they are increasingly questioning farming methods and how their food is made.”

And the chicken industry is aware of that tension in the mindset of Canadian consumers. But instead of making meaningful change, says Camille Labchuk, an animal rights lawyer and the director of Animal Justice, the industry has “consistently tried to greenwash and humane-wash their cruel processes.”
There have been international efforts made by animal advocates to push individual businesses to switch to slower-growing chickens by 2024 through an initiative called the Better Chicken Commitment. More than 200 companies, including Nestlé, Campbell’s, Burger King and Starbucks, have signed on to the commitment, but compared to the U.S., Canadian companies have been slow to join the program.

Even so, in an email to Corporate Knights, the CFC claims slower-growing chickens would have a greater impact on the environment, requiring more water and feed and producing more waste. Thus, it appears that when it comes to chicken meat production, environmental efficiency is at direct odds with animal welfare.

Canadian animal welfare laws include exemptions for standard farming practices. Instead of being overseen by the government, the daily treatment of animals on farms is governed by a voluntary code of practice created by the National Farm Animal Care Council (NFACC), a group mainly made up of industry stakeholders. The CFC claims farmers are held accountable by third-party audits, but as Labchuk explains, audits are industry-controlled, not conducted by the government or animal welfare organizations. “Any private audits the chicken industry conducts on itself are meaningless, and a poor substitute for public oversight.”

Is the chicken local?

CFC’s Raised by a Canadian Farmer marketing campaign was developed to push back against public concerns around conditions on “factory farms,” a term commonly used to refer to large, industrialized facilities raising animals for food. “Over 90% of Canadian chicken farms are family owned and operated,” says the CFC, implying that family-owned farms cannot be factory farms, and leaving out the huge spike in the average number of chickens per farm in Canada in recent decades.

Though the eat-local trend has gained traction in recent years among conscious consumers looking to support Canadian farmers, sourcing animal meat locally “has very little impact on the actual environmental footprint,” says Carter, adding there are much better sources of eco-friendly protein, such as beans and peas. For example, chicken meat production emits about six kilograms of greenhouse gases per serving, whereas production of beans – another high-protein food grown in abundance in Canada – emits around one to two kilograms per serving. So while chicken has a smaller carbon footprint than beef, many suggest a total shift away from all industrial animal farming will be necessary for the world to reach net-zero.

In the spring, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food Marie-Claude Bibeau announced new federal funding to help Canadian chicken producers become even more efficient. The program will provide nearly $350 million in funds over 10 years, in part to help chicken farmers increase efficiency, productivity and environmental sustainability. Though part of the program’s mandate is also to respond “to consumer preferences,” including “improving animal welfare,” there is no indication that would mean increasing standards beyond existing NFACC codes.

Though this multimillion-dollar investment is likely to shrink the carbon footprint of the protein we eat, through improvements in areas such as lighting and heating efficiency, Carter says it is also likely to lead to greater animal welfare concerns. “I don’t think most Canadians want more factory farming, more intensive animal agriculture,” he says, “and that’s really how the industry is getting more efficient.”

Jessica Scott-Reid is a freelance writer covering animal rights and welfare and plant-based food topics. She is also a co-host of the Canadian animal law podcast Paw & Order.

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“Business schools and universities in Canada have been slow on this front,” concedes University of Alberta business dean Kyle Murray. “It’s something we probably should have been taking action on decades ago, but there is a lot more momentum now.”

As Canada reckons with its dark history of residential schools and colonial attitudes to Indigenous people, some of that new momentum comes from individual professors. Earlier this year, inspired by a 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) event and a university workshop on decolonizing course materials, U of A business professor David Deephouse delivered a new elective: Introduction to Indigenous Business.

“It’s meant to help people understand more about Indigenous businesses and the context in which they operate,” including the use of Indigenous case studies, says Deephouse.

In modernizing courses, collaboration is key. University of Victoria Gustavson School of Business professor Doug Stuart is refreshing a third-year tax course for 2022 with assistance from Prince George–based Mindy Wight, a member of the Squamish Nation and national leader of Indigenous Tax Services for MNP, an accounting, tax and business consulting firm. The course integrates material on First Nation governments that operate their own revenue systems, as well as how Canadian and provincial government tax rules apply when an Indigenous business owner operates on or off reserve.

“Indigenous and non-Indigenous tax experts, as a matter of serving the public interest, should be learning material to support all business owners in Canada,” Stuart says.

Earlier this year, Sonya Graci, a non-Indigenous professor of hospitality and tourism management at Ryerson University’s Ted Rogers School of Management, developed a new elective on Indigenous tourism with Indigenous industry leaders. On offer this fall, it is the business school’s first explicitly Indigenous course. Like sustainability and climate change, such content “is a very pertinent issue for all our students,” Graci says.

Indigenizing business curricula

Schools typically pursue one of two curriculum strategies: embed material or create electives. Earlier this year, Australia’s Griffith Business School (where self-identified First Peoples account for 2.1% of the student body) overhauled its Bachelor of Business to incorporate material throughout the four-year degree rather than offer only electives. Griffith is the first business school in Australia to commit to Indigenizing its entire program in an embedded, integrated and interdisciplinary way, thereby introducing students to “the importance of understanding First Peoples Knowledge in a business.”

Previously, Indigenous topics “had always been to the side, in specialized silos,” says Ruth McPhail, academic director. The goal now is to raise awareness among white students of Australia’s rich Aboriginal history and the growing economic power of a new generation of Indigenous entrepreneurs. “This is critical information for students, and we will embrace it in every part of the curriculum,” she says.

Accounting professor Kerry Bodle, the school’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander academic director, previously taught Indigenous content, such as history, government policies and cultural protocols, as electives. She was instrumental in blending these topics and additional content into the revised bachelor’s degree while assisting professors to teach the updated courses with confidence.

Descended from Karendali, Kalali and Waka Waka First Peoples, Bodle reflects on the academic sea-change. “When I came for a graduate degree [23 years ago], there was nothing about Indigenous people unless you talked about all the deficits,” she says.

In Canada, UVic’s Gustavson also integrates content across the curriculum instead of mandating a course. Successful implementation, says dean Saul Klein, rests on training faculty members “to feel comfortable to raise and talk about issues that are of Indigenous concern in all of their classes.”

More often, though, schools choose to add electives.

New mandatory courses

One exception is the University of Lethbridge’s Dhillon School of Business, which this fall introduced a mandatory Indigenous course in its four-year undergraduate degree. Students can choose from numerous topics – Blackfoot language, conversational reconciliation and Aboriginal health – to fulfil their obligation.

“We wanted to move on this, so we created the course requirement” especially to educate non-Indigenous students, says Dhillon dean Kerry Godfrey.

For decades, the school has offered variations of a successful Indigenous governance and business management program.

The mandatory course is just a first step. Godfrey has recruited Leroy Little Bear, a long-time Indigenous leader, emeritus professor and senior advisor to Lethbridge’s president on Aboriginal initiatives, to help the school speed up efforts to embed Indigenous content.

The course requirement is “long, long overdue,” says Dhillon assistant professor Don McIntyre, an Ojibway of the Wolf Clan from Timiskaming First Nation. Since the TRC’s 94 Calls to Action, which include closing achievement gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous post-secondary students, he says, “institutions are trying to figure out how to do that.”

At the University of Manitoba’s Asper School of Business, which has run an Indigenous Business Education Partners program for First Nations, Métis and Inuit students for 25 years, a curriculum review now in progress could lead to a possible new mandatory course for all incoming Asper business students by 2023.

“We are in Manitoba – should I say more?” says outgoing Asper dean Gady Jacoby, given that Indigenous people, a fast-growing cohort, currently account for 18% of the provincial population. “We are decades behind where we should be. We need to do as much as possible as soon as possible.”

The school’s strategy extends beyond content, including the appointment this year of Indigenous-focused inclusion consultant Mary Jane Maillet Brownscombe, a Métis and school alumnae, to the inaugural position of executive-in-residence.

We are decades behind where we should be. We need to do as much as possible as soon as possible.
—Gady Jacoby, outgoing dean at the University of Manitoba’s Asper Schoolof Business

Jacoby’s urgency for action is shared by others. Colleges are also expanding for-credit Indigenous programs, with certificates and diplomas at 16 institutions, according to Colleges and Institutes Canada.

Still, challenges remain, including a shortage of Indigenous faculty.

Bettina Schneider, associate dean of community research and graduate programs at First Nations University of Canada, says it’s critical that these business programs hire more Indigenous academics. “It is so important that Indigenous programs include Indigenous scholars who can bring certain perspectives and lived experiences to the classroom,” says Schneider, who is non-Indigenous.

At Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business, Rick Colbourne, associate dean of equity and inclusive communities and an Algonquin Anishinaabe member of the Mattawa/North Bay Algonquin First Nation, is leading efforts to develop new courses and reform tenure and promotion to attract Indigenous scholars. Colbourne sets out his benchmarks for success: more Indigenous faculty members and PhDs, more Indigenous undergraduate and graduate students, more Indigenous leaders at the senior levels of university administration, and increased engagement with local Indigenous communities.

Colbourne credits the work of the TRC in kick-starting the new, if belated, work of business schools to equip their graduates with knowledge of Indigenous issues.

“The TRC Calls to Action was a turning point in a lot of ways,” he says. “Business schools needed to start listening to this, and they needed to start taking notice.”

Jennifer Lewington is an intrepid reporter and writes regularly on many topics, including business school news.

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“You meet nobody; you’re in total wilderness, surrounded by boreal forest,” says Pier-Olivier Boudreault, a conservation director for the Société pour la nature et les parcs (SNAP), the Quebec arm of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS).

These pristine waters, also known by the Indigenous name Muteshekau-shipu, came under threat several years ago when Hydro-Québec included the river in a strategic plan for a hydroelectric dam project. Alarmed conservationists, whitewater rafters, a Côte-Nord municipality and a First Nation band formed the Muteshekau-shipu Alliance in 2018 to oppose the project. The coalition included the Indigenous Ekuanitshit Innu Council, the Minganie regional county municipality, Association Eaux-Vives Minganie and SNAP. “We had a common goal of protecting the river,” says Boudreault.

Initially, the Muteshekau-shipu Alliance tried to create a protected area under provincial law, an initiative strongly opposed by the provincial government and Hydro-Québec. Inspired by an international Indigenous-led movement that supports the rights of nature, the alliance instead sought “personhood” for the Magpie. Montreal-based International Observatory on the Rights of Nature (IORN) drafted nine rights for the river, including the right to flow and be safe from pollution. In what was a first for Canada, early this year the Ekuanitshit Innu Council and the Minganie regional county municipality granted personhood to the river, which joined a small but growing list of rivers and wild spaces globally that have been granted the same fundamental right to exist that a human has. This time, there was no opposition from the province or Hydro-Québec.

Under common law, which is practised in the United States, the United Kingdom, India, New Zealand, Australia and Canada, personhood means that an entity has rights ascribed to it. Corporations and churches have personhood. Everything else – animals and ecosystems – are considered “things” that, similar to property, can be owned and exploited. “The rights-of-nature movement is a paradigm shift,” says Boudreault. “Nature has a reason to live.”

Along with personhood comes the granting of legal guardians who uphold the rights of the river and can sue for damages on its behalf, should the need arise. This is crucial, says Boudreault, as Hydro-Québec may want to revisit its original plan to dam the river.

Bolstered by the Magpie achievement, environmental advocates have turned their sights on a much larger waterway, the 1,200-kilometre-long St. Lawrence River.

[Securing personhood rights for rivers] is the best way to ensure a healthy environment for present and future generations.
—Yenny Vega Cárdenas, IORN president and lawyer

The river flows from Lake Ontario to the Atlantic, crossing two provincial, as well as the Canada-U.S., borders. Two years ago, IORN helped create the Saint Lawrence River alliance, which includes conservation groups, some Quebec municipalities and more than 10 Indigenous groups whose traditional territories touch upon the vast waterway. Attaining personhood will be more complex for the St. Lawrence than the Magpie; the river is highly industrialized and comes under provincial and federal jurisdiction. Undeterred, the alliance will table the motion with Quebec’s provincial legislative body in 2022. Advocates plan to support their claim by including legal precedents from jurisdictions around the globe like Ecuador, Colombia and New Zealand. (See sidebar on pages 30/31.) The pursuit of the St. Lawrence’s personhood received the backing of the federal New Democratic Party during the federal election campaign in September.

IORN president and lawyer Yenny Vega Cárdenas says a key objective of the personhood initiative is “starting a conversation” with industry and agriculture. Agriculture and corporate activities have devastated parts of the St. Lawrence, home to beluga whales, otters, multitudes of fish species, and migratory birds like snow geese. The river is afflicted by suffocating algae blooms linked to agricultural runoff and high levels of restricted pesticides such as neonicotinoids. Chemical pollutants from oil and gas drilling and hydraulic fracking that occur close to the river also affect water quality and are toxic to wildlife. Personhood would give the river fundamental rights, pressure industry and agriculture to stop polluting, and compel municipalities to improve water treatment facilities, Cárdenas says. “It’s the best way to ensure a healthy environment for present and future generations.”

Constitutional change needed

Mumta Ito is one of the EU’s leading advocates for codifying nature’s rights into law. Ito, a Scotland-based lawyer who founded the charity Nature’s Rights, warns that the Magpie River’s personhood status doesn’t protect it from a legal court challenge down the road by powerful economic or political forces. Ito emphasizes that, in order for nature to be considered equal to humans and corporations in the courts, rights must be embedded at the highest level, such as the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Other countries, such as Ecuador and Bolivia, prioritized the rights of nature over economic development in their constitutions in 2008 and 2009 respectively. In 2019, Bangladesh’s highest court granted every river in the country legal personhood, so that anyone damaging a waterway can be tried as if they have harmed a living entity.

The Bangladesh NGO Human Rights and Peace was consequently appointed guardian of all national rivers. The effect of the legislation has been imperfect, with politicians and businesses reportedly flouting riverside eviction notices. However, there have been successes, with the court ordering the closure of 231 unauthorized factories on the Buriganga River last year, according to the Rights of Rivers, a global survey of the rapidly developing Rights of Nature jurisprudence pertaining to rivers.

Currently, environmental law doesn’t challenge “the way our societal systems operate,” says Ito, who co-authored a 2020 study, Towards an EU Charter of the Fundamental Charter for the Rights of Nature, commissioned by the EU’s European Economic and Social Committee. The study proposes a restructuring of law to enshrine nature as a rights-bearing subject equal to humans and corporations – which is, on paper at least, a guiding principle for EU nations, none of whom, to date, have granted personhood to rivers. (An initiative is underway to grant personhood to Spain’s Mar Menor, one of Europe’s largest seawater lagoons, which was devastated in 2016 by agricultural discharge that sparked an algae bloom and killed off tens of thousands of fish.)

A judicial shift would have significant implications for corporations. Companies, such as those peddling tobacco and opioids, have already been found legally responsible for the harm their products cause. Globally, the Stop Ecocide Foundation is seeking to protect nature’s rights even further by pushing the International Criminal Court in The Hague to adopt “ecocide” – an act causing severe or long-term damage to the environment – as a prosecutable crime on par with war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression. Corporations would be found legally responsible for such things as deforestation and oil spills.

It’s seeing things that are not human as [having] equal stature from a moral perspective.
—Ian Moore, Mack Law Corp.

If rivers have rights, what are the potential ramifications for industry and infrastructure projects that interfere with waterways? Governments see hydroelectric dams as a way to generate clean renewable energy. But environmental advocates and First Nations communities don’t necessarily agree. For example, British Columbia’s Peace River is the contentious site of the Site C Dam, the $16-billion hydroelectric megaproject set for completion in 2025. Federal and provincial scientists report that the dam, spearheaded by BC Hydro, a Crown corporation, will destroy the habitat of dozens of species of insects, mammals and plants, many on the brink of extinction. Colorado-based environmental lawyer Grant Wilson, founder of the Earth Law Center, says Site C is a “clear violation of the rights of the Peace River, in addition to many Indigenous rights violations.”

Wilson’s Earth Law Center advises groups around the world that seek to establish legal rights for waterways. This year, the non-profit co-developed the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Rivers. Signed by nearly 200 organizations to date, the declaration serves as a legal template for anyone wanting to adopt the rights of rivers, Wilson says. The centre is poised to release a legal toolkit customized for B.C. that Wilson hopes will be helpful to those groups fighting the ongoing construction of the Site C dam. The toolkit incorporates a largely untested but powerful legal document: the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), which was enshrined into B.C. law in 2019.

Vancouver lawyer Ian Moore, an associate counsel at Mack Law Corp., an Indigenous-owned firm that works primarily with First Nations but represents Inuit and Métis groups as well, contributed to the B.C. toolkit. Moore says that a number of B.C. First Nations will be using the toolkit as they seek to emulate the Magpie River’s designation of personhood.

One B.C. First Nation has formally aligned itself with the concept of personhood for rivers. In 2020, Tilhqot’in First Nation released a document establishing Sturgeon River Law. (The Fraser River, also known as the Sturgeon River, supports trout, salmon, whitefish and sturgeon.) The Tilhqot’in refer to water as tu, declaring that it is “a life form, it has its own spirit with human qualities.” The document also sets out the responsibilities of the Tilhqot’in regarding tu, stating that the community is a steward for future generations and must ensure the river is kept clean. If it is degraded, they must take corrective steps to restore ecosystem health. “These relationships define us as a Nation and highlight our protection and stewardship responsibilities that are grounded in our inherent and self-government rights,” the document states.

Congested, constricted and polluted waterways also impact the rights of other wildlife. Industry, dams and urbanization along the lower Fraser River floodplains – critical to Pacific coho and Chinook salmon – have resulted in the loss of 85% of spawning grounds, a recent report by University of British Columbia researchers and the Raincoast Conservation Foundation revealed. Such spawning-grounds loss has a deleterious effect on wildlife higher up the food chain, including the endangered Southern Resident orca population. A coalition formed by Earth Law Center is working to advance a proposed bill before the Washington State Legislature to recognize the rights of the Southern Resident orcas and the ecosystems upon which they depend, including the Salish Sea ecosystem, which spans the shores of Washington through to B.C.

The right to sue

Given the calamities that industrialization and corporations have inflicted upon the environment, how important is a river’s right to sue, should it attain personhood? Moore emphasizes that the primary value in recognizing legal personhood isn’t the ability of non-humans to sue but rather the opportunity to restructure our relationships with nature. “It’s seeing things that are not human as [having] equal stature from a moral perspective. It’s about relationship-shifting,” he says.

Precedence exists, however, with Ecuador’s Vilcabamba River, which, acting as a plaintiff alongside two property owners, stopped a damaging road construction project in 2011 by filing a constitutional injunction. The Rights of Rivers notes that, despite a raft of remedial and rehabilitation orders, the polluter ignored the directive.

Wilson hopes that establishing parameters and standards of operation will allow businesses to become partners in protecting the planet. “Companies like predictability,” he notes. The ultimate aim: a revolution that sees corporations, the public and Indigenous groups collaborating and working toward a common goal of respecting nature. Within this new zeitgeist, much ground needs to be made up. Wilson is optimistic, noting that even a river that is completely dead – as many are throughout the world – can be revitalized.

“Nature has an amazing capacity to restore itself to health when given the opportunity.”

Court Victories From Around the Globe

Ecuador & Bolivia
In 2008, Ecuador became the first country to create a constitution that recognizes the right of nature to exist and regenerate. Bolivia followed in 2010 with a Rights of Mother Earth Law.

United States
Last year, Orange County, Florida, granted legal rights to all waterways, including two rivers. It is but one of several American jurisdictions to enact rights-of-nature laws, beginning in 2006 with the borough of Tamaqua in Pennsylvania, which declared toxic sewage dumping to be a violation of the rights of nature.

New Zealand
In 2017, a treaty agreement between New Zealand’s parliament and a Maori tribe declared the Whanganui River a “legal entity,” along with a former national park, Te Urewera, and Mount Taranaki. That same year, India’s Ganges and Yamuna rivers were declared legal persons, a decision later overturned by the Supreme Court, as it was declared unsustainable at law.

Colombia
In 2018, 25 plaintiffs aged seven to 26 successfully sued the Colombian government in that country’s highest court for failing to protect the Amazon, claiming that deforestation violated their constitutional right to life and a healthy environment. As a result, the court granted the Amazon River ecosystem the same legal rights as a human being.

Roberta Staley is a Vancouver-based author, magazine editor, writer and documentary filmmaker.

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Unfortunately, only 55% of workers agree that their organizations are both socially and environmentally responsible in their business practices. There is clearly an opportunity here for companies to do better.

In recent years, the use of environmental, social and governance (ESG) indicators to measure a company’s performance has exploded in popularity – and with good reason. In addition to mounting public expectations for companies to be “good corporate citizens,” a 2021 meta-analysis conducted in partnership with NYU and Rockefeller Asset Management points to a growing body of evidence that good corporate management of ESG is tied to improved financial performance.

But beyond higher stock valuation and shareholder returns, the findings of the LifeWorks Research Group’s August 2021 Mental Health Index also showed that an organization’s behaviour can significantly impact workers’ mental health and productivity. We found that workers who report that their employer is environmentally and socially responsible also report, on average, having better mental health.

It turns out that those who feel a sense of belonging or acceptance have higher productivity than those who don’t. That warm and fuzzy sense of belonging is an important marker of psychological safety, one that can be activated when the company you work for aligns with your personal values, whether it’s support for action on climate change and plastic pollution or a strong commitment to diversity and inclusion.

How did polling play out in different parts of the world? The results for all four countries surveyed are fairly similar. However, Australians rate their employers the best on social justice, while the Brits are last on this front. U.K. respondents are the least impressed by their employers’ ESG efforts, while U.S. workers are the least likely to say that ESG is important to them.

By and large, respondents in the bottom third of mental health scores in all four countries were significantly more likely to not feel a sense of belonging and acceptance at work. They were also significantly less likely to agree that their employer is socially and environmentally responsible. The workers who would recommend their organization as a “great place to work” (an indicator of engagement) just so happen to be on average 11% more productive than workers who would not.

The data is clear on a number of fronts. Improving a company’s performance on environmental and social metrics brings more value to shareholders, yes, but also, employees who feel good about their companies’ environmental and social behaviour reported better worker productivity, engagement and psychological safety. The triple bottom line: organizations would do well to deepen their commitments to environmentally and socially responsible business practices if they want to keep their workers happy.

Paula Allen is senior vice-president of research and total well-being at LifeWorks.

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