Do you sometimes have itchy feet and wish you could explore, learn and share about environmental and sustainable energy projects on the ground? This happened to us. We had both worked several years (and are now again), me as a sustainable energy consultant for E4tech, developing for example strategic bioenergy plans and evaluating its sustainability impacts. Sara as environmental economist for the Environment Department in London, analysing the costs and benefits of different policy options. Exciting projects that often looked at the big picture. But we didn’t know many of the on the ground realities, difficulties and solutions of sustainable energy or environmental projects in a development context. We were curious to discover what makes them successful in the long-term. On a bicycle. A one-year trip along the Andes of South America. I got inspired for such a trip many years before, when I met former oikos PhD fellow Tim Lehmann back at the oikos spring meeting in Reims in 2009. He told me about their trip “Expedition Welt” meeting numerous social entrepreneurs around the world, I read their book and it stayed with me for a while. oikos inspired me and motivated me to contribute actively. I was a member of oikos Reims in 2007, then co-founded oikos Budapest and was part of the Executive Board in 2010.

We set off to the largest city on earth with no road access, Iquitos in the Peruvian Amazon, to support Peruvian-British charity Plant your Future to implement a smartphone-based monitoring system to improve and inform expansion in their agroforestry schemes. With temperatures above 30C, high humidity and no roads, it was not the obvious place to start a one-year bike trip. But it was an ideal place to get properly involved in on-the-ground project work. Six weeks later we had set up the monitoring system, trained local staff to use it, learned about the importance of farmers’ monetary involvement for well managed agroforestry schemes, had all the Spanish agroforestry vocab ready to use and were motivated to get pedalling. After a boat on the Amazon for three days, we arrived at the first road where we could get our wheels on the ground. Roads, gravel paths and dirt tracks would lead us slowly south towards Patagonia before heading back up north to Ecuador and Colombia. On route, often with large diversions, we visited around twenty environmental and sustainable energy projects. We tended to organise project visits a few weeks before passing through an area by either reaching out to people in my network (international Mespom MSc, the IIIEE, oikos etc.), directly contacting NGOs or development organisation, or through chance encounters with interesting people on the way.

So, what did we learn about what makes a project or programme successful in the long-term? Our trip was far from academic research, rather an ad hoc collection of views of those who have initiated, or managed, or benefitted from certain schemes. Our blog will soon include our extended version, but for now, three examples to share:

• How to increase incomes (and reduce deforestation)? Think about the market before you start: We were faced with a number of farmers in Peru who, based on advice and specific credit from a Government scheme, dedicated their land to growing a the latest ‘trendy’, higher value crop, such as Sacha Inchi, or Palm Oil. They realised a few years later, with the mature crop loaded up, that there were no local buyers and that three day shipping along the Amazon to the closest processing facility was too expensive. Rather than improved livelihoods, these farmers were often left with monoculture, less food for their own families and debt to be repaid. In contrast, Amazónicos por la Amazonia (AMPA) in Peru had already sourced their high value market before they started encouraging farmers to designate a proportion of their rice paddies to growing shrimps. Chefs in Lima were clambering after these sustainable fresh-water shrimps, ensuring the farmers had ready buyers as soon as the first shrimps were ready.
• How to develop and maintain knowledge in a community? Stand-back: Mauricio, an inspiring Colombian renewable energy engineer who introduced us to a number of his successful community projects, told us he never ‘acts the engineer’. In the plains of Colombia, Los Llanos, he stood casually at the base of the wind turbine in construction, now and then providing assurance to the enthusiastic William, strapped to the turbine as he adjusted the blades. Mauricio never carries out any of the work himself. Turbines or irrigation technologies are constructed on site, by locals. Locals spend days slowly learning how to construct each part, understanding by trial and error why a screw shouldn’t go in a certain place.
• How to ensure a community´s involvement? Endev and Stichting Samay provided “no gifts” – families always had to contribute a proportion themselves – to ensure that there was a viable local market for potential businesses. Plus, the contribution – in money or time – would ensure that the services or products provided were actually something which the community wanted or needed. And, as a result, had the motivation to maintain – and make the service last for longer.

At the end of the trip, we were guest speakers for Project Colombia, a social enterprise
with three arms: working with larger businesses to improve their social impact; teaching English to increase the opportunities of rural Colombians; training current and future entrepreneurs, through 4 week courses, sponsored by local mayors and the CSR budget of larger companies. They are always looking for people like oikees, be it via skype or in person, do get in touch with Nelson here if you would be interested in collaborating.

These are, of course, only what we have learnt on this specific route in a specific context, along the tarmac roads and gravel paths where our mountain-bike tyres have taken us. I am very happy to hear from you if you had similar experiences, planning to go on a learning journey or just would like to get in touch. If you happen to know anyone working for a cable car company (e.g. Doppelmayr), or a perfume/essential oil/bath products company, we are looking for financing to repair a cable car in a cut-off village in the Colombian Andes and for markets for lemongrass essential oil from a post-conflict area in Colombia. Do contact me through the “Submit” feature of our blog and I will email back.

On June 16^th-17^th, the International Conference on Business, Policy and Sustainability was held at Copenhagen Business School with speakers including Hans Bruyninckx, Executive Director of the European Environment Agency, R. Edward Freeman, Professor at The University of Virginia, and Annette Stube, Director of Group Sustainability at Maersk. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to present at this conference during the session ‘Sustainability in University Education and Operations’ on June 17^th alongside Jonas Haertle, Head of UN PRME, and Peter Jonasson, former University Director at CBS. Jonas’ focus was on what PRME is doing to integrate sustainability in business schools, Peter discussed the challenges of integrating sustainability in university operations, and I was there to present what students are currently doing to drive change towards sustainability, and how we see the role of business schools.

As some of the attendees at the conference were not aware of oikos, I started by presenting oikos international in order to give an insight into our organisation’s history and engagement. I was proud to present the fact that we currently have more than 1200 members and over 200 projects annually worldwide – clearly demonstrating how sustainability is an interest amongst students across both borders and cultures, and reflecting the global movement that it has truly become. I also gave an overview of the engagement and activities in our local chapter, oikos Copenhagen. Here, focus was put on how we try to inform, educate, inspire and engage students in Copenhagen through our three main projects: oikos Academy, Green Week and Develop Prize. Our oikos Academy is a project based on 5 sessions on a sustainability related topic each semester, which is available to all students. Former topics have included ‘Urban Sustainability in Copenhagen’, ‘Sustainable Food Consumption’ and ‘Sustainable Business Models’. Our Green Week, which we do in collaboration with CBS, is a week at CBS focusing on sustainability. It consists of lectures, workshops and different events such as a sustainable business fair and fashion show, and this year we had more than 20 different companies participating including Accenture, Unilever, DriveNow and H&M. Finally, our Develop Prize is a social entrepreneurship competition that brings together students to create and develop solutions that work towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Furthermore, I was able to present some of the challenges and ambitions that we have in oikos Copenhagen. As a student organisation, we face several challenges of how to engage students, businesses and universities, how to get funding and how to actually make an impact.

We believe a way to make a strong impact is to really push the sustainable agenda in education, which is why an ambition of oikos Copenhagen for the coming year is to collaborate and contribute to develop a stronger focus on sustainability and sustainable management in the education at CBS. A way we are trying to do this is through our new project ‘oikos Education’ – a project that will integrate a lecture and a workshop on concepts within sustainable management in the new Bachelor student’s intro week. By doing so, we hope to create a strong interest amongst students throughout their studies for sustainability issues and solutions. We believe that it is absolutely essential for business schools to integrate sustainability principles into their education because, as Albert Einstein once said “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”.

After the presentation, I had the opportunity to join a panel debate together with Jonas Haertle and Peter Jonasson, where we further discussed the role of business schools as not just educational institutions, but as norm setters and thought leaders – and how they need to work with their most valuable resource: the students. Overall, it was a great opportunity to get the student voice out there and show all the work that we do in oikos – on both the national and international level.

Written by Julie Andrea Jungen Jensen, oikos Copenhagen 

On Thursday June 23rd, members from oikos Paderborn, Cologne, Leipzig, Reutlingen, St Gallen and international, met to kick-off the Germany Meeting 2016. After getting to know each other a vegetarian dinner was served at a local restaurant in Paderborn to talk sustainability and catch up.

On Friday the Heldentag took place. With a record of 150 participants from the area, the event started with a sustainability quiz. Introductions were then made of the 6 workshop hosts and keynote speaker. A buffet was then laid out made entirely out of wasted food and a personalized cake for the event, entitled Fair-Anderung (essentially fair change). The first workshops round included a workshop by FemNet, one by Wasteland Rebel and one by Unverpackt Munster. The first drew attention to the NGOs work to combat modern slavery in the fashion supply chain, especially in Southern India. The latter two shared their stories on how to reduce waste and natural alternatives to our current everyday practices. Lunch followed.

Directly after lunch the keynote speaker took the floor, Tanja Steins, is the owner of Contigo Paderborn. Contigo is a fair-trade shop and Ms. Steins addressed the topic of fair trade and how to improve our efforts in cities as a whole towards more fair trade. The keynote presentation was followed by other three workshops: one by Limoment, one by Urgewald and the final was entitled Gemeinwohl-Okonomie. The first related to the lemonade’s brand ‘Limoment’ where the founder spoke about the need for more sustainable beverages and share a drinking moment with the participants. The second rose the issue of sustainability and finance, and presented their actions to eradicate investments in coal and the topic of divestment as a whole. In the third workshop, as the title suggests, speakers presented their criteria for a ‘Gemeinwohl-Okonomie’ in business and for society as a whole. The day was concluded with a pizza dinner.

The final day of the Germany Meeting started with a session on oikos, what is our structure, what are open positions and where can we better collaborate. After interesting discussions, a short city tour demonstrated the interesting characteristics of Paderborn and the sustainability aspects of the smallest official city in Germany. The Germany Meeting was terminated with an alternative lunch over Berlin Doeners and a trip to the Contigo shop where fair trade coffee was roasted and tasted on a rainy day.