Project plans under dev.

Citizens have never before been as much concerned about the state of the environment and future prospects of global resources as they are today. Warnings of growing environmental and associated social problems which could literally endanger the future of humanity appear to be causing a significant shift in attitudes among a successively increasing portion of the world’s citizens. In many countries, environmental and social problems rank as one of the most prioritised issues of the future, triggered by the alarming climate change during the last decades. The awareness that humans and the environment are exposed to threats no longer invisible and unknown has created much emotions and the willingness to act. Climate change threatens the basic elements of life for humans around...

This project aims to build and launch a new international media platform, for human rights, environmental issues, public affairs and related topics. The media platform will serve as an independent forum for actors ranging from companies to organisations and to private individuals, with the overarching goal to inspire positive, pro-active efforts on issues which are in the public interest and which foster a more sustainable world.

Identify common indicators of sustainable performance that can be used by SME's to measure their environmental performance towards achieving sustainable business practices and outcomes and generate cost savings. These indicators could be based on the work done in ISO 14031 EPE in terms of management, operational and environmental indicators and be supported by the development of a sector specific performance database.

In most developing countries, water demand is superseding water supply, with the possibility of water shortage problems. Serious sanitation, economical problems may result. Governments in developing countries are developing policies to cope with the situation and experience has shown that bottom up approaches are most successful. Community based initiatives are implemented in different parts of the world aiming to introduce integrated water management policies and strategies. Another aspect of water shortage is that it is mostly women that have the responsibility to get the water and they have to walk longer and longer distances to get drinkable water. Microfinancing has turned out to be a very effective tool for smaller local investments.

The objective of this project is to provide SMEs with a model, similar to the model for financial accounting, for declaring their environmental efforts. The model will include strong motivators generating direct economic benefits such as lowered costs, interest rates, insurance premiums, and taxes.The project encompasses six phases: five of these are related to generating a working model and to test this on a number of pilot enterprises. The sixth phase, building on the result of the pilots, will develop a verified environmental declaration (given the working name E-VAT, Environmental Value Added Tax). E-VAT is intended to be a voluntary system for companies that pay corporate taxes. With E-VAT, environmental performance improvements will result in economic stimulation.