1 Rise of the conscious consumer (Jessi Baker in The
Guardian) Today, when corporations can be more influential than entire states,
where we put our pounds is where the power lies. The problem is the world of
business can be opaque and supply chains are murky, so it is difficult to
confidently make an informed choice.
Consider this: the retail manufacturing industry is
the second most polluting industry on earth, second only to oil. According to
Annie Leonard, an expert in overconsumption, only 1% of the materials used to
produce our consumer goods are still in use six months after sale. Somewhere,
the value of craftsmanship and of provenance has been lost. Price and speed are
trumping value.
However, the tide is turning. Increasing awareness
around these issues has led to a rise in what is known as conscious
consumption, a movement of people who seek out ways to make positive decisions
about what to buy and look for a solution to the negative impact consumerism is
having on our world.
A study from YouGov and the Global Poverty Project
revealed that 74% of those surveyed would pay an extra 5% for their clothes if
there was a guarantee workers were being paid fairly and working in safe
conditions. Issues such as equal pay, environmentally conscious manufacturing
processes, prevention of counterfeit goods, human trafficking, responsible
farming practices and overproduction of goods are all at the forefront of
consumers’ minds when making these choices.
I believe technology is the key to dealing with the
challenges created by consumerism. Open data, social networks and mobile tech
can change the game. Groundbreaking technologies could enable transparency in
supply chains, which is why this year I have embarked on turning my findings
into a social enterprise to empower businesses to take steps to being open.
I strongly believe that information about supply
chains, about materials and processes can be an inspiring part of a brand and
product’s story. We are at the start of a long journey but if we are going to
tackle the huge impact our current production levels are having on the world,
we must begin by understanding where our products come from.
2 Beef ban and India’s secularism (Justin Rowlatt on
BBC) It is a bizarre image: cops demanding mug-shots of cows rather than
crooks. But that's what officers in the city of Malegaon in Maharashtra, one of
India's most populous states, are doing in an attempt to enforce its new beef
ban.
But, to be fair, this is a tough law to enforce.
You'd pretty much have to catch the newly criminalised butchers with their
hands in a cow carcass - literally "red-handed" - to be certain of
conviction. That's because, without DNA analysis or a very refined palate, it
is hard to tell the difference between beef and buffalo meat.
Unfortunately for India's buffaloes, they aren't
regarded as close enough to God to deserve protection. Buffalo is banned in
just one of the country's 29 states. Beef, meanwhile, is already banned in most
of northern and western India, and there are partial bans in most of the rest
of the country.
As with so much conflict in the world, the real
reason the ban is such a sensitive issue here is religion. The Hindu majority -
80% of the country's 1.2 billion people - regard cows as divine; the 180
million-strong Muslim minority see them as a tasty meal. Many Muslims see the
extension of the beef ban as evidence of an assault on one of the key
principles on which independent India was founded - secularism.
India's secularism was a response to horrors of the
partition when millions of people were murdered as Hindus and Muslims fled
their homes. The country's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, argued equal
treatment was a reasonable concession to the millions of Muslims who'd decided
to risk all by staying in India. But India is now governed by a Hindu
nationalist party, the BJP.
The party leader and Prime Minister Narendra Modi
has repeatedly reasserted his commitment to secularism yet the party has
supported the clampdown on beef in Maharashtra. That's why while the idea of
cow mug shots may be amusing, the beef ban is deadly serious. India's triumph
has been forging a nation in which Hindus and Muslims can live happily
together. The fear is that the beef ban is part of a process that is gradually
undermining the compromises that made that possible.
3 Of Asian and Arab autocrats (Thomas L Friedman in
Straits Times/NYT) After World War II, Asia was ruled by many autocrats who
essentially came to their people and said, "My people, we're going to take
away your freedom, but we're going to give you the best education,
infrastructure and export-led growth policies money can buy. And eventually
you'll build a big middle class and win your freedom." Over that same
period, Arab autocrats came to their people and said, "My people, we're
going to take away your freedom and give you the Arab-Israel conflict."
Asian autocrats tended to be modernisers, like
Singapore's former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, who died last month at 91 - and
you see the results today: Singaporeans waiting in line for up to 10 hours to
pay last respects to a man who vaulted them from nothing into the global middle
class.
Arab autocrats tended to be predators who used the
conflict with Israel as a shiny object to distract their people from their own
mis-governance. The result: Libya, Yemen, Syria and Iraq are now human
development disaster areas.
Some saw this coming. In 2002, a group of Arab
social scientists produced the United Nations' Arab Human Development Report.
It said the Arab world suffered deficits of freedom, knowledge and women's
empowerment, and, if it did not turn around, it would get where it was going.
It was ignored by the Arab League. In 2011, the educated Arab masses rose up to
force a turnaround before they got where they were going.
Except for Tunisia (the only Arab country whose
autocrat was also a moderniser), that awakening fizzled out. So now they've got
where they were going: state collapse and a cauldron of tribal,
sectarian
(Shi'ite-Sunni, Persian-Arab) civil wars - in a region bulging with unemployed,
angry young people and schools that barely function, or, if they do, they teach
an excess of religion, not maths.
Some 25 per cent of Egyptians are illiterate today
after $50 billion in US aid since 1979. (In China, illiteracy is at 5 per cent;
in Iran, 15 per cent.) My heart goes out to all the people in this region. But
when your leaders waste 70 years, the hole is really deep.
In fairness, President el-Sissi is trying to dig
Egypt out. Nevertheless, Egypt may send troops to defeat the rebels in Yemen.
If so, it would be the first case of a country where 25 per cent of the
population can't read, sending troops to rescue a country where the water comes
through the tap 36 hours a month, to quell a war where the main issue is the
seventh century struggle over who is the rightful heir to the Prophet Muhammad
- Shi'ites or Sunnis. Any Chinese pre-schooler can tell you: That's not an
equation for success.
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