Greenmonk: the blog

I can’t say how pleased I am that Thomas Bjelkeman has just received funding for his important AKVO project. I am especially proud and pleased because I serve on the advisory board of Movement Design Bureau, and have helped AKVO co-founder Mark Charmer with his marketing and social software strategies in getting to this point. Clean from the roots up. How could you not want to help? Given Mark’s strong focus on open source methods for research, advisory, and fund-raising… you can see why I got involved. Akvo’s mission:

To provide free and open working knowledge, a collaborative community, finance solutions and a marketplace for the water and sanitation community.

Akvo is the first internet based open knowledge platform dedicated to small scale water and sanitation solutions; easy to access, great to work with and delivering practical information.

Akvo will make it possible to connect funds directly to local initiatives. By doing so it will significantly reduce transaction costs, and makes it easier to attract additional sources of funding to provide the poor with water and sanitation. Through Akvo you will see how money is spent and how projects develop in a transparent and visual appealing way.

Why?

More than 1.1 billion people have no safe drinking water and 2.6 billion people lack basic sanitation around the world.

Each year, as a result, 1.8 million children die of diarrhoea or other diseases, 440 million school days are missed, and in sub-Saharan Africa alone US$28.4 billion are lost in productivity and opportunity costs. UN Millennium Development Goal 7, target 10 states that by 2015 we must halve the number of people in the world who lack clean drinking water and basic sanitation.

So what is the news, exactly? Akvo can now move from stalking horse to production platform- it can really begin to drive partnerships and begin to roll out clean water initiatives. Akvo was an idea. Now its an organisation. That is quite a burden. Hopefully I can continue to help.

A group of eight investors led by Netherlands Water Partnership (NWP), Partners for Water and UN-HABITAT has agreed to finance Akvo in a signing session in Rotterdam, Holland. This unique new water venture will reduce the cost and complexity of providing clean water and basic sanitation to the world’s poor through open source internet tools, methods and working practices. The agreements were made during Unicef’s World Water Day matchmaking event, hosted by Prince Willem-Alexander of Orange and the Mayor of Rotterdam, Ivo Opstelten.

The investment, comprising at least €400,000 of cash grants and €100,000 of in-kind support, will enable Akvo to develop its core product, extend its global network and complete arrangements for a further €1m loan. This is the second funding round for Akvo which was created in autumn 2006 and grew with €212,000 of seed investment from NWP and Partners for Water. New investors include Aqua 4 All, ASN Bank, IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre, NEDAP, Union of Waterboards and Simavi.

Akvo has this month signed agreements with implementation partners in the developing world to support over 75 projects this year. These NGO partners are Women in Europe for a Common Future, Rain Foundation, NWP NGO Platform, Institute for Communication and Development (IICD), WASTE, Simavi, Practica Foundation, AquaEst and FODRA. Other strategic partners include Acacia Institute, AT@Work, WESNET India, Arghyam, Rural Water Supply Network, Micro Water Facility and the Informal World Water Forum 4 Appropriate Technology Network.

I am pretty sure Mark and Thomas will be at the pub right now. They deserve it. Today beer, and tomorrow back to cleaner water. One of the things I particularly like is Mark’s iconoclastic approach to marketing. See the poster above.

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We’re used to dealing with red tape, but enviromental issues are going to create a mountain of green tape. Some of the legislation and regulation will be called for, some will be pointless. One regulation that SAP talked about this week at an event in Orlando really got me thinking.

First though what is this regulation?

REACH is a new European Community Regulation on chemicals and their safe use (EC 1907/2006). It deals with the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemical substances. The new law entered into force on 1 June 2007.

The aim of REACH is to improve the protection of human health and the environment through the better and earlier identification of the intrinsic properties of chemical substances. At the same time, innovative capability and competitiveness of the EU chemicals industry should be enhanced. The benefits of the REACH system will come gradually, as more and more substances are phased into REACH.

Many in industry slammed the regulation when it was first mooted, but as the father of a two year old I applaud it. We need to become a lot more careful about chemical leaching into the environment, and its great to see the EU make a stand on the issue. When male songbirds start developing female voices because of pollutants its time to thinking much harder about our impacts on the environment, and what it might mean for child development. I don’t want my boy to end up sounding like Leona Lewis.

Greentape isn’t confined to the EU however. In the US the Toxic Substance Control Act (Tosca), which has far higher fines than REACH and, for example, specific local regs in countries such as Norway.

SAP currently deals with REACH registration and notification management through a partnership with a firm called Technidata. It plans integration with its global trade services and health and safety modules. Specialist consulting firms such as ReachReady and Oval Systems are also emerging. It will be a bean feast for vendors, but no less important for that. Interestingly IBM and Oracle don’t seem to be saying much on the subject. But of course SAP is stepped in European manufacturing in a way those other firms just aren’t.

If you are in manufacturing and you’re aren’t getting reach for REACH its time to get started. Green from the top down. Well done the EU.

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Much as I am skeptical of bold-faced claims like “Vista is green” it does appear that Steve Ballmer is talking some sense on the subject. In Computerworld coverage of CeBIT this week it was notable that rather than talking about product Ballmer talked about best practices.

“Microsoft is to release a set of best practices for administrators running datacentres that share the energy-saving strategies the vendor is applying to its own operations, promised CEO Steve Ballmer.”

A few months ago I criticised the software giant for not responding to eco-responsibility, let alone driving it, but that all seems to be changing now. A big step forward came when Microsoft assigned responsibility for sustainability planning to one guy, Rob Bernard (who I blogged about here) . Now as the Windows Server 2008 rollout really starts to drum, Microsoft is refactoring its green assets and positioning them accordingly.

Sometimes its the basics- on the PCside for example better power management does make a difference. Discouraging users from setting up screensavers, for example, could lead to surprisingly large power savings. I think that Microsoft virtualisation is going to be a huge win here.

According to Ballmer:

“If you look at non-travel power consumption in the world today… information technology is one of the most rapidly growing power consumers on the planet,” Ballmer said. “We think we have a real responsibility… to reduce power consumption by the IT industry.

Frankly its great that CeBIT chose Green as the theme of the year - it meant all of the major IT vendors had yet another reason to think about their strategies in this area.

Asus even pitched a laptop with a bamboo case. Thanks to Treehugger for this image:

As I have said before marketing green is not a sin. Outcomes are more important than justifications. When you consider how sales of organic foods have sky-rocketed its clear consumer behaviours can change, so why not in the IT arena. Some say its all hype, well that’s fine. But use of sustainable materials, and improved energy efficiency have to be good things, whatever planet you’re on.

People love to throw stones at Microsoft, but just as the company is currently demonstrating, with a flurry of substantive announcements of better interoperability with open source from a business and technical perspective, that it can change, so its green efforts should pay dividends.

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