The indigenous Peruvians have a saying that if you want nature to provide for you, you need to provide for nature.
We seem to have lost that feeling: We have set up society to focus on efficiency above everything: our society seeks to produce more using less- less labour, fewer materials, less energy… BUT while we are efficient about production, we are not so efficient about the byproducts – waste, pollution, effluent, emissions, green-house gasses…. And we are absolutely inefficient about how we use products.
In fact, our society rewards consumption and overconsumption with status and admiration – to the point that we don’t refer to people as people or as citizens – we refer to them as consumers. You can argue that that is because we have made labour and materials and energy expensive – but waste and pollution and ‘growth’ cheap. So we have set up a system that rewards bad things like unemployment and pollution, and punishes good things like reuse, full employment and clean-production.
It’s very easy to feel like a prisoner of this system.
Is this a woman’s issue?
Yes!
Why? Because traditionally, women think in terms of “we”. And we invest in and maintain community. Men tend to think in terms of “I” and to set up competitive and individualistic systems. For example, studies have shown that give aid money to men, and they spend it betting or drinking, while that same money given to women goes to children’s education, nutritious food and business development. This isn’t a rule. But it is statistically valid, to the point that the United Nations (through UNICEF and other branches) is actually recommending that aid be delivered to women rather than men.
Today, the world’s eyes are on Copenhagen because the fate of our societies and their communities hangs upon the commitments our political leaders make. (Notice that I did not say the fate of the planet. Because the planet will live with or without us. But we cannot live without the planet and the air, water food and resources it provides us). And we need to ensure that as representatives of more than half the world’s population, we women speak up, and reclaim our traditional values to care for and defend nature by creating a society that works with nature, not against it.
WIN’s role
Let me pause for a minute to tell you about WIN – because this is the ethos that we seek to sustain: we exist to empower, to develop and to connect women with a global, authentic and feminine (integral) vision. In this vision and emerging paradigm, feminine values such as integrity, spirituality, compassion, resilience, community, sensuality and a win-win approach play central roles.
W.I.N.’s overall objective: evoking change to authenticity and raising feminine and global awareness to create a sustainable future, include inspiring success based individuality (not individualistic), cultivating authentic leadership and encouraging feminine ways of doing business and of being. It promotes sensitivity and courage; transforming knowledge into wisdom; pursuing goals while consciously letting life unfold.
This means developing sensibilities, listening within as well as considering the surroundings, caring for others, for future generations, for the planet and for ourselves. It requires the sharing of knowledge, experiences, results, truth, power and discoveries. It requires fearlessly standing for and defending what we commit to.
And this is why I am hopeful
When I talk to women at the personal level, they understand sustainability. I have yet to be in a room where people didn’t very quickly identify all the major environmental and social challenges that face us. Where things get confusing is figuring out what to address, and how to have an impact as just one person.
Which is exactly why I feel hopeful. We now have attention on the problems – and we have seen the links between the climate crisis, the financial crisis and our social costs. This is an important first step.
And this is helping us address the assumptions we make about the world we live in: That the way of doing things we inherited is the way that things should be done. That a model of production based on taking – making – and wasting is effective. We see today hundreds of thousands of organisationsglobally addressing parts of this larger system – trying to improve equality, justice and environmental effectiveness for people, plants, society and planet. We don’t always notice them because they’re not driven by charismatic individuals seeking power, but by groups of individuals seeking to distribute power – and opportunity.
Now we are starting to look at our own part in the system. What is it that we need to change – individually but not alone. The changes that will create a society built on a sustainable platform – where we reward the right behaviours, and make the wrong behaviours costly.
It’s not always obvious
We tend to focus on what is most obvious to us: packaging waste. Light bulbs. Maybe our car.
What’s more difficult is to understand where the big environmental impacts come from, and what we can do to keep those small. Here are a couple of examples, some from companies W.I.N. has worked with:
- Fish: it seems obvious that eating fresh fish would be more sustainable than eating frozen fish. Actually, the reverse is true at the global level. When fish is fresh, it needs to be transported very, very quickly. Which means it gets flown everywhere. Making the impact the same as your flying off on holiday every time. But, if the fish is flash frozen, it can be transported slowly by boat and train with very low environmental impact.
- Detergent: when Procter & Gamble looked at the impact of its various detergents throughout their life, they discovered that the biggest impact of all – over 80% of the total impact – came from heating the water to wash clothes at home. As a result, they spent their Research and Development monies on developing cold water detergent. The result? youcan get clothes just as clean, at lukewarm temperatures – this saves 80% of the energy, saves you money, and minimizes the impact. And as changes go, its ten times as important as the difference between powdered or liquid detergent…
- Packaging: When Tetra Pak looked at the impacts of its packaging from choice of materials to their customer, they discovered that the impacts were 80% due to their choice of materials, and only 10% from their operations. By increasing the proportion of renewable resources like paper, and reducing the amount of aluminiumand oil-based plastic, they could make much more substantial reductions in environmental impact than by changing their operations. Counter-intuitive, but importantly true.
So where does that leave us?
It means we need to ensure we are getting the right information to make the right decisions – in a way we can understand it. Ultimately, this will need to be an environmental label like the nutritional label – that tells you how the product & it’s packaging are performing environmentally across a number of criteria (climate change gasses; toxicity to humans and the environment;…). Imagine these like a ‘pie’ – in which each of the slices not only has a value, but is also colour-coded green-amber-red so that you could scan the label, see it was mostly green and know it’s ok. Or, conversely, see that it is mostly red and think – waaah! No!
Seem impossible?
Wal-Mart, Disney, Procter & Gamble, and other major companies are banding together in a sustainability consortium to develop just such a sustainability label. It will ensure that our focus is not just on the visible impacts of the product & packaging in our house, but all the hidden impacts. It should include fair trade categories also, so you know that the product was produced in a way that preserves nature, and preserves human well being. (http://www.sustainabilityconsortium.org/)
What do we need to do?
Understand & pay attention to the hidden impacts – where does our meat come from? how were our clothes made? How are electronics recycled? Use labels and brands to advantage by looking for the independent labels like Marine Stewardship Council, Rainforest Alliance, FSC, and Fair Trade. These choices ensure your purchases are supporting the world you want to live in.
Hold politicians and business accountable:
- ask politicians for the world you want, support the organisations that keep a watch on them, and exercise your voice! When they know you are watching, they become more mindful, and more respectful. When they think you are not – they respond to those who are: particularly big businesses.
- ask businesses for the world you want, support the organisations that keep a watch on them, and exercise your voice! When they know you are paying attention, they pay attention too. And will align their practices with the world we want to see.
Take direct action: we have posted a guide on our site, that lays out the Big actions you can take to reduce your impacts dramatically.
Let me come back here to women’s particular role.
Efficiency, which our society and companies are predicated on, is not how nature operates. Nature depends on resiliency – adaptation, redundancy, interconnections… When new information arrives in a man’s brain, it very quickly gets sorted and sent to a particular part of the brain. We can track this with electrodes, and demonstrate the arrival of the information and the brain lighting up. And then see a different part of the brain light up as the information gets stored.
When a piece of information arrives in a woman’s brain, the brain lights up all over the place. We tend to make connections, and see the interrelationships between everything. Which is exactly how nature works. Whereas an economy based on efficiency, sorting information quickly and parking it in one box, is counter to the way nature works.
Our challenge is to build a world that depends upon sustaining the interconnections – so that we don’t suffer pollution, climate change, and the other ills we suffer from today. Women have the hardwiring to see this.
So, as I ask you all to take a deep breath and to become very present, remembering that we are wise women. We must not forget that. Because when the authentic “feminine” (integral) woman comes tolife she follows what her intuition tells her, knowledge and skills are her tools servicing her wisdom in action, not the other way around. She is committed and her integrity and resilience to defend our communities, our projects and our ways is her power. She is very, very powerful. She cares and – please do not get her wrong, care has a strong quality – it implies the quality of nurturing and the quality of fearlessly defending what she commits to. She is a lioness protecting her cubs
Now let’s seize the moment and claim our roles so that we build a society that works – for people, for society, for planet.
Thank you.
–Written with Kristin Engvig founder and CEO of WIN (Women’s International Network) for presentation at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference
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