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Retail futures 2022
James Goodman, September 6th, Projects
Skyscrapers full of farms, cereal with added ginseng, clothes that double as medicines, and Kentish kiwis on the shelves... Persil sponsored schools, Tesco villages and the chance to pick your own chicken (and kill it too).
Is this what 2022 looks like? If so, where - and how - will we shop? Will there still be supermarkets? And what does that mean for today's major retailers?
Those are the questions at the heart of Retail Futures, our report produced with support from Tesco and Unilever. It draws on some intensive future-gazing work to sketch out four distinct scenarios for 15 years hence. Each depicts a world at once familiar, but with striking differences to our own -
'My Way' - a world of high consumption and sophisticated technology, characterised also by high levels of individual freedom. People are no longer so dependent on big business and government. In 'My Way', communities are doing it for themselves.
In 'Sell it to Me', hedonistic individuals pursue pleasure-seeking lifestyles, and expect 'Big Brother' (in the form of business and government) to meet their every desire - albeit in environment-friendly and ethical ways.
By contrast, in 'From Me to You', individuals trust only those they are close to. With the economy struggling, they depend on their communities for everything - from homegrown vegetables to peer-to-peer mortgages.
Life in 'I'm in Your Hands' is dominated by informatin. With disposable incomes dramatically reduced, and loyalty crds compulsory, discounted living in the supermarket village looks increasingly appealing.
None of these is intended to be a prediction - but they're not fanciful science fiction: each of them is rooted in research or pilots already well under way. The similarities between the scenarios - all exist in a world of climate change, resource depletion, global economic and demographic shifts for example - reflect what we can be more certain about over the next 15 years. The differences exploit current uncertainties about the future.
Together, they're designed to help major retailers n particular think and plan for a more sustainable future.
For more information, visit the project page where you can download the report. You might also enjoy the article in the Guardian.
Looking forward to a low carbon future
James Goodman, September 24th, Projects
A low carbon Britain doesn't have to mean cutbacks and sacrifice. Climate change is an enormous challenge. But if we respond in the right way, many of the changes we make could improve our quality of life.
We could be living healthier, more prosperous lives in stronger, better connected and cleaner communities. That’s according to our latest project - Low Carbon Living 2022.
Low Carbon Living 2022 looks forward 15 years and shows ways in which a low carbon future could deliver:
- stronger communities
- a cleaner local environment
- more money
- better transport
- a healthier lifestyle, and
- a thriving economy.
Financially supported by the Carbon Trust and RWE npower, the project sets out nine products and services which would be doing well in a low carbon future. Five of the products and services have high quality web based adverts to promote them including:
UGrow - UGrow provides all the equipment and training needed to grow food at home, whether in the garden, on the roof, in a window-box or even in a spare wardrobe. The company buys any surplus produced and sells it to local restaurants and markets.
Airstream - It’s time for the return of luxury airships. Airstream runs airships using the latest, safest technology on popular routes around the world. On holiday routes passengers are treated to 360 degree views, a gym, restaurant and bar. Business passengers can enjoy open-plan office space and state of the art ‘virtual windows’, allowing meetings with people anywhere in the world.
Shop&Drop – Shop&Drop is a password-protected area built into a house or garden, much like the coal-bunkers of yore, where groceries or other products bought online can be left securely, meaning you don’t have to be in when they arrive.
The adverts are accompanied by further information about the products and services as well as visions of different lives in a low carbon future.
Speaking about the project, James Goodman, head of futures, said:
“It's true that climate change is an enormous challenge, one that some people have compared to the second world war, and we need to do everything we can to combat it.
“But part of that means talking more about what victory looks like. If we act urgently and get things right, many of the changes we make will improve our quality of life, from better transport and healthier lifestyles to stronger local communities."
Visit our projects page for more information
The sustainable cities index
Peter Madden, October 20th, Projects
Brighton and Hove is the most sustainable city in Britain. That's the conclusion of our latest report, The Sustainable Cities Index.
The report comes at a time when the race to be a truly ‘sustainable city’ is increasingly competitive, with Manchester determined to become ‘the Greenest City in Britain by 2010’, Bristol wanting to become a ‘Green Capital’ and London aiming for nothing less than the status of ‘most sustainable city in the world’.
Aiming to cut through the rhetoric, the new report brings rigour to the debate by using current data to determine who’s sustainable and who’s not. In it, each of the UK’s 20 largest cities are analysed according to three criteria – their ‘environmental impact', ‘quality of life’ and ‘future proofing’ – and given an overall ranking which summarises the results.
The data reveals that Brighton and Hove is the most sustainable city followed by Edinburgh in second place and Bristol in third. Liverpool comes bottom of the list, after Hull in 18th place and Birmingham in 19th.
In the UK, around nine in ten people live in towns and cities. Globally, we are now a majority urban world. We have no choice but to learn to live together in sustainable ways in cities. This will mean providing a high quality of life for all residents. It will also mean reducing the wider environmental impact of cities. Forum for the Future chose three baskets of indicators against which to rank the cities.
• The Environmental Impact of the city – the impact of the city on the wider environment in terms of resource use and pollution
• The Quality of Life for residents – what the city is like to live in for all its citizens.
• Future Proofing – how well the city is preparing itself for a sustainable future.
Forum selected these index categories to reflect the sustainability of each city in a fair and balanced way. We used a total of 13 indicators, spread across the three baskets. The indicators use existing data on aspects of performance on which cities are already expected to make improvements. We intend to measure these indicators year-on-year.
Commenting on the findings of the research, Peter Madden CEO of Forum for the Future said:
“We are an increasingly urban world. Britain, with its strong civic tradition, should be leading the way in sustainable city-living. We hope this index will make our cities better places to live, with a lower overall impact on the environment. We also hope it will encourage some healthy competition amongst our big cities to see who is greenest.”
Commenting on the city’s position at the top of the rankings, Brighton and Hove City council leader Brian Oxley said:
"It's really good that council policy on this is actually translating into eco-friendly measures and that these have been recognised. These range from higher than average bus use to new the development near Brighton Station achieving the Ecohomes Excellent rating. Although we're only one city, we are a famous place and hopefully we're helping spread the message that acting locally could make the difference globally."
Click here to visit our projects page and download the report
Retail Futures podcasts
Joy Green, November 1st, Projects
We launched our Retail Futures 2022 report just over a month ago, to great interest. At the launch event we asked Kilter Theatre Company to write and perform four short plays to bring each of the scenarios to life. They went down really well, and so we've published them as a series of short podcasts (~5 mins each).
You can either subscribe to them via iTunes (instructions at the bottom of this post) - or you can listen to them directly using the links below.
Have a listen!
Scenario One - 'My way'
Scenario Two - 'Sell it to me'
Scenario Three - 'From me to you'
Scenario Four - 'I'm in your hands'
If you prefer to use iTunes, simply copy the address below, then switch to iTunes and select the Advanced menu, followed by 'subscribe to podcast'. Paste in the URL below and you're done - you can listen to all four episodes.
http://forum.hipcast.com/rss/retail-futures-2022-four-scenarios.xml
The Green List 2007
Imogen Martineau, November 5th, Projects
We like lists. And we like most things green. So the publication today of the The Guardian's Green List has been a great start to our week. The 32-page supplement shows the direct and indirect emissions of the FTSE 100 companies (where these are publicly available), the social costs of these emissions and whether or not the companies have a published carbon dioxide reduction policy.
We've been working with the Guardian in the last few months to collate this data, and have contributed our analysis of the 10 largest companies in the world.
Visit our projects page to find out more and see the results.
No excuses for inaction
Peter Madden, November 6th, Projects
It is perhaps surprising that business is beginning to make progress on the environment while our elected governments are wasting precious time.
Whether it is the images of polar bears drowning, films like An Inconvenient Truth or the growing pile of learned reports, the evidence is sinking in and this country seems, at last, to be waking-up to sustainability. The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change's latest assessment effectively ended any serious debate about whether climate change is happening, and whether human activity is the cause. Economist Nicholas Stern's report said that climate change could shrink the global economy by a fifth, and calculated that for every £1 of investment in preventing climate change between £5 and £20 of impact related costs can be saved. Excuses not to act are in short supply.
This is great for those of us who have been slogging away on environmental issues for years, knocking on doors saying "this is important". The business response has really taken off this year. Among our partners at Forum for the Future, Marks & Spencer have had the highest profile. Through their Plan A, they are investigating and tackling the sustainability impact of every single area of their business. Equally ambitious declarations of intent have come from the retail giants Wal-Mart and Tesco. Tesco, one of the top five retailers in the world, has promised independently audited absolute reductions in C02 emissions from its operations and carbon labelling on all products.
A significant change in approach from the companies we work with is the shift in perception of environment from a risk issue, to be handled by technical staff or the PR department, to a strategic issue, central to the future of the whole business. When we began work more than a decade ago, our partners asked: "What should our sustainability strategy be, in the light of our business?" Now the likes of BT, First Choice and Unilever are asking, "What should our business strategy be, in the light of sustainability?"
A road paved with good intentionsGovernment is moving more slowly. The Climate Change Bill will set statutory targets for carbon reduction. But this Government has excelled at setting reduction targets while presiding over real increases. Its good intentions are not reflected in spending: less than £10bn on environmental protection and enhancement, compared with the hundreds of billions spent on security, health and education. The same is true of taxation. Friends of the Earth calculate that - despite Gordon Brown's promise to the contrary - green taxes as a percentage of overall taxes have actually fallen (from 9.4 % to 7.7 %) since Labour took power in 1997.
Following the money would tell a similar story in other sectors. Even among some of the most high-profile examples of business moving in the right direction - General Electric investing $1.5bn in products that offer significant environmental benefits or BP putting $8bn into its Alternative Energy business - the sums are still small compared to overall turnover, or investment in conventional, unsustainable paths.
So, we have some momentum and movement, but we are not there yet. What else do we need to do? One major task is to turn the green agenda from a negative to a positive one. The environmental movement tends to focus on limits and constraints, and talk about the future in gloomily apocalyptic terms: Species are disappearing. The planet is overheating. If you want to do anything about it, you'll have to lead a life of sacrifice and constraint. This is not an enticing story for most people, and there is a real risk that they will move directly from ignorance to despair.
As any brand manager will tell you, people want positive things they can aspire to. To motivate them to behave differently we need to offer attractive but credible visions of the future. Organisations also need to feel the pull of a better future rather than the need make efficiency savings or comply with regulations.
This positive framing unleashes the creativity and innovation necessary to make products and services smarter and more efficient, satisfying needs while using less of the earth's resources and contributing far less pollution. Plenty of examples show that it is possible to design out waste and harness clean sources of energy. We also know such approaches represent a huge market opportunity. Stern argues that, "as a result of action on climate change, new markets are created in low-carbon energy technologies and other low-carbon goods and services. These markets could grow to be worth billions of dollars each year." Companies and investors need to start moving into them. As Goldman Sachs says, "More capital is now focused on sustainable business models, and the market is rewarding leaders and new entrants in a way that could scarcely have been predicted even 15 years ago."
The timings, though, are very tight. With climate science giving us a window of 10 to 15 years to make really dramatic changes in our lifestyles, bold leadership is critical. While the public are increasingly concerned, many remain confused about what they should actually do. At the moment, we are seeing more signs of leadership from the business community, such as Tesco's Terry Leahy, Virgin's Richard Branson or Stuart Rose at M&S. As Leahy puts it, "I am determined that Tesco should be a leader in helping to create a low-carbon economy." These commitments from the corporate world are leaving national governments looking rather timid. Take the radicalism of Ken Livingstone and the untested plans of David Cameron out of the equation and genuine political leadership on sustainability is in worryingly short supply.
A low-carbon Britain doesn't have to mean cutbacks and sacrifice. If we respond in the right way, many of the changes we make could improve our quality of life. We could be living healthier, more prosperous lives in stronger, better connected and cleaner communities. Will our leaders take us there?
This article was written for The Guardian's Green List supplement
Read Sally Uren's article - 'Hall of shame'
Listen to Sally Uren interviewed by The Guardian
Read more about our contribution to the Green List 2007
Image: Ennor
Farming Futures gets a £250K boost
Katie Zabel, November 22nd, Projects
Farming is responsible for 7% of the UK’s green house gas emissions. Which is why we’ve spent the last year raising awareness of climate change with farmers and land managers through our Farming Futures project – and why we’ll be continuing this work with the help of a further £250K from Defra to fund it for another 18 months.
Farming Futures is a collaboration between the big beasts of the farming world - the NFU, CLA, Agricultural Industries Confederation, Defra and the levy boards - helping farmers and land managers tackle the challenges of climate change and look towards the opportunities it could offer in the years ahead.
Farming experts provide advice on adaptation and mitigation and pioneering farmers who have already started growing crops like olives, almonds and apricots are sharing the lessons they've learned with the wider farming community.
We co-ordinate the project, and our Green Futures team have produced a great special report on the subject - Feeding the Future.
You can also read about Farming Futures in The Independent.
Investing Wisely
Meredith Carter, December 21st, Projects
Investors who thought that preventing climate change would be good for both their pockets and their conscience are being advised to think again.
Our latest report alerts both current and potential investors to the wider social and environmental impacts of technologies that combat climate change and warns that these could jeopardize their financial nest eggs.
Written as part of the London Accord, the report Investments to Combat Climate Change – Exploring the Sustainable Solutions gives examples of some unwelcome outcomes where technologies have focused too narrowly on reducing carbon dioxide emissions. One is the recent rise in global food prices, which was in part due to high rates of investment in biofuels. But perhaps more worrying is the growth of advanced solar PV which uses rare materials and nanotechnologies that have unknown risks and the deveopment of genetically engineered bio-organisms for next generation fuels.
Each of these technologies will have wider impacts once they are scaled up to a level where they can deliver effective reductions in carbon emissions - impacts that investors should be aware of.
This is not to say that investors should avoid carbon saving technologies. Far from it. The US$100 billion invested in clean energy in 2007 was much needed, but not nearly enough to deliver clean energy on the scale that's needed.
More money is needed - but it's more important than ever that it's spent wisely. Otherwise the risks to local communities and the environment could make a mockery of the good intentions of many investors. And could put their investments at risk in the process.
Worse still, this growing sector could suffer from a reputational blip which could set it back years - something we don't have time for.
So what's the solution? Well considering the bigger picture is the only way to avoid the risks. By looking through the wider lens of sustainability rather than only focusing on carbon emissions, investors can identify and manage wider issues that may threaten the success of their investments.
When it's not just your money but the survival of people and planet that's at stake, it's good to get it right.
Download the report Investments to Combat Climate Change – Exploring the Sustainable Solutions
The opportunity agenda for leader businesses
Imogen Martineau, January 17th, Projects
Leader Business Strategies, our latest research on sustainable development and the business case, has found companies that are profiting from treating sustainability as a strategic issue.
In the past companies have asked us "What should our sustainability strategy be for our business?" Now they're asking "What should our business strategy be, in the light of sustainability?"
There has been a shift from risk to opportunity.
Leader Business Strategies categorises many different case studies into one practical model of business strategies and gives the three key approaches they are using to integrate sustainability into strategy.
Download Leader Business Strategies here (full length report)
Download the summary document here
Read an analysis and interview with the report's author, David Bent, in Director Magazine
Future Leaders Survey 2007/08
Jemima Jewell, January 30th, Projects
What's it like to be a young person today, knowing everything we do about what we're doing to the planet and its future?
Our survey, published today in conjunction with UCAS, provides an insight into the minds of a generation of future leaders. We asked all applicants to universities and colleges in the UK what they really think about the world, the future and our current host of leaders - and we got over 25,000 responses.
They told us that they're worried about climate change, they think the Amazon rainforest will soon be gone and that oil will be extortionately expensive. They also think significant change is needed if human civilisation is going to survive into the next century.
It's a pretty disheartening picture. But there's also lots here to be optimistic about. For a start, they're aware of the scale of challenge. Secondly, there's active support for radical measures and strong action - with 86% saying material consumption must decrease. And last, they're clear who they think is responsible for taking action - with government coming top of the list.
To see the results visit the Future Leaders Survey 2007/08 project page....
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