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How young people are shaping the future of sustainable fashion

Young people around the world are working to clean up a dirty fashion industry. The $2 trillion industry is responsible for 10% of the global carbon footprint, negative environmental effects including water pollution, the use of toxic chemicals and high levels of textile waste, and poor working conditions for millions of workers, primarily women. The World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers community is taking a grassroots approach to address these issues on local and regional levels while promoting a global dialogue about how to encourage sustainable transformations in the industry. “Fashion, as an overarching term for the apparel, footwear and textiles sector, is a huge global industry that touches us all (physically!) and employs millions of people,” says Holly Syrett, 32, a Global Shaper in the Amsterdam Hub. “But it is simultaneously a very dirty business that has long hidden how it works.” This year more than 30 Global Shaper hubs worldwide are participating in Shaping Fashion, an initiative that organizes activities and projects during Fashion Revolution Week to raise awareness of the sustainability challenges of the fashion industry and empower local communities to pursue sustainable fashion solutions. The projects include clothing swaps, film screenings and roundtables – each designed to meet the local community’s needs and inspire sustainable fashion efforts year-round, says Syrett, who is a co-founder of the initiative. For example, the Amsterdam Hub in the Netherlands is bringing together two groups, Sustainable Apparel Coalition and Fashion for Good, to discuss the importance of transparency in the fashion industry with members of the local community.F7 The Lusaka Hub in Zambia is organising a thrift market to promote the consumption of second-hand clothing and a panel discussion to examine what sustainable fashion looks like in Africa. There is opportunity for the African fashion industry to draw from lessons around the world but also form a unique approach to sustainable fashion that honors each local […]

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Ten years ago, I started The Mirror, a magazine for creative thinking, politics, the environment, great reading…a magazine which was to be a positive experience for the times in which we live. And now, of course, there is The Mirror website which is well supported and widely read. I dont start publishing activities to ‘keep up with the Jones” but to be part of a world network of people who, like me, want to inspire and be inspired. So this is a small note to ask readers to communicate their realities, pictures for the future (think climate change, globalisation) and feed into a bigger picture we all can share to enlighten and inform each other. Regards, Doug Green, Publisher

Zucked:Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe

By Roger McNamee This is the dramatic story of how a noted tech venture capitalist, an early mentor to Mark Zuckerberg and investor in his company, woke up to the serious damage Facebook was doing to our society and set out to try to stop it.If you had told Roger McNamee three years ago that he would soon be devoting himself to stopping Facebook from destroying democracy, he would have howled with laughter. He had mentored many tech leaders in his illustrious career as an investor, but few things had made him prouder, or been better for his fund’s bottom line, than his early service to Mark Zuckerberg. Still a large shareholder in Facebook, he had every good reason to stay on the bright side. Until he simply couldn’t. Zucked is McNamee’s intimate reckoning with the catastrophic failure of the head of one of the world’s most powerful companies to face up to the damage he is doing. It’s a story that begins with a series of rude awakenings. First there is the author’s dawning realisation that the platform is being manipulated by some very bad actors. Then there is the even more unsettling realisation that Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg are unable or unwilling to share his concerns, polite as they may be to his face. And then comes Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, and the emergence of one horrific piece of news after another about the malign ends to which the Facebook platform has been put. To McNamee’s shock, Facebook’s leaders still duck and dissemble, viewing the matter as a public relations problem. Now thoroughly alienated, McNamee digs into the issue, and fortuitously meets up with some fellow travellers who share his concerns, and help him sharpen its focus. Soon he and a dream team of Silicon Valley […]

Historian berates billionaires at Davos over tax avoidance

A discussion panel at the Davos World Economic Forum has become a sensation after a Dutch historian took billionaires to task for not paying taxes. In a video shared tens of thousands of times, Rutger Bregman, author of the book Utopia for Realists, bemoans the failure of attendees at the recent gathering in Switzerland to address the key issue in the battle for greater equality: the failure of rich people to pay their fair share of taxes. Noting that 1,500 people had travelled to Davos by private jet to hear David Attenborough talk about climate change, he said he was bewildered that no one was talking about raising taxes on the rich. “I hear people talking the language of participation, justice, equality and transparency but almost no one raises the real issue of tax avoidance, right? And of the rich just not paying their fair share,” Bregman tells the Time magazine panel on inequality. “It feels like I’m at a firefighters conference and no one’s allowed to speak about water.” Industry had to “stop talking about philanthropy and start talking about taxes”, he said, and cited the high tax regime of 1950s America as an example to disprove arguments by businesspeople at Davos such as Michael Dell that economies with high personal taxation could not succeed. “That’s it,” he says. “Taxes, taxes, taxes. All the rest is bullshit in my opinion.” A member of the audience, former Yahoo chief financial officer Ken Goldman, challenged his comments and said it was a “one-sided panel”. He argued the fiscal settings across the global economy had been successful and had created record employment. But another panel member, Winnie Byanyima, an Oxfam executive director, took up the fight and said high employment was not a good thing in itself because many people found themselves in exploitative work. She […]

Why the latest inter-Korea summit matters

The detente between North and South Korea continues, with South Korean President Moon Jae-in (right) pushing on regardless of the United States. -Benjamin Habib, Lecturer in International Relations, Department of Politics and Philosophy, La Trobe University. Last week’s fifth inter-Korean summit provided another round of iconic moments in a year of extraordinary drama in Korean Peninsula politics. From Moon Jae-in’s address at the Arirang Mass Games to the leaders’ photo-op on the shores of the crater lake at Paekdusan, the three-day summit produced plenty of symbolism. More importantly, it increased the detail and scope of confidence-building measures agreed in the earlier Panmunjom Declaration. Much of the commentary in the wake of the summit has focused on what the Pyongyang Declaration means for the potential denuclearisation of North Korea. To view the summit through the narrow lens of nuclear politics would be to overlook the significance of deeper patterns that are emerging from inter-Korean détente. Filling in the details The first notable feature of the Pyongyang Declaration is the increased depth of military-to-military confidence-building measures, as articulated in its attached annex. One of the questions emerging from the Panmunjom Declaration related to how that document’s vague commitments to cooperation would be fleshed out in detail. In the Pyongyang Declaration are measures for increased conflict management procedures and greater operational level consultation. This includes a series of measures along the demilitarised zone (DMZ) and Northern Limit Line maritime boundary to reduce the risk of confrontation. A holistic approach to security There is a clear human security focus in the breadth and depth of the Pyongyang Declaration that has moved inter-Korean engagement well beyond denuclearisation. Human security is about protecting individuals and communities from threats to their well-being and survival. This might be from traditional security threats of war or persecution, or from […]

How to gently get a child to brush his teeth

How to gently get your child to brush his teeth

For most parents, the phrase “I don’t want to brush my teeth” is rather familiar. While it may seem easiest to pry their mouth open and force them to brush, research suggests there are better ways that may positively influence children’s future dental health. So, what does the literature say you should do to help children brush their teeth? What is gentle parenting? Gentle parenting centres around respect for the child. Parents who practise this approach generally avoid artificial or extrinsic rewards or punishments. These parents try to help their children habituate appropriate, or what we would call “good”, behaviours. The idea is the child should want to do the “right” thing for its own sake, not because it’s accompanied by a reward or because of the threat of a punishment. Studies suggest this method is effective because children will go on to have superior social skills and fewer behavioural problems. The effect is believed to continue into adulthood. Contrary to popular belief, this style of parenting does not eschew “consequences”. Rather, consequences are allowed to flow naturally from behaviour. Although, in the case of dental hygiene, we can’t let the natural consequence of not brushing lead to caries. So, what can you do? When should you start encouraging dental hygiene? One of the ways to ensure children brush their teeth, without resorting to bribes or punishments, is to start early. Dentists suggest brushing baby’s first teeth when they appear, even wiping gums, may help establish good dental hygiene early. By starting early with dental care, it will become an established part of life and may cause fewer power struggles. Let your child brush your teeth, and you theirs. from www.shutterstock.com Does routine help? Routine is said to be essential in children’s lives. Studies suggest routine can positively impact on children habituating positive behaviours because of the repeated exposure. Families who provide a loving and consistent structure are more likely to have children who brush […]

Why schools should teach the curriculum of the future, not the past

Schoolchildren use their XO laptops outside Laura Vicuna school in Laguna de Apoyo, Granada, Nicaragua. Robots,artificial intelligence, automation – no longer the stuff of science fiction movies. Overwhelming evidence shows the shift in what the workforce needs is already underway and that it will continue to grow much larger in the future. All around the world, leaders from government and industry debate the future of work and the changes brought by technology and automation. Despite this, the world is not reacting fast enough to update our system of education. According to analysis of 750 occupations by the McKinsey Global Institute, 51% of job activities are highly susceptible to automation – and that’s through adapting currently demonstrated technology alone. It’s also important to note that these activities span jobs across industries as well as skill and wage levels. This indicates that automation is much less likely to lead to the mass unemployment predicted by alarmists but is almost certainly going to necessitate the redefinition of most occupations and requisite skills. US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014 US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014 Image: O*Net, McKinsey What are we doing to prepare future generations to thrive in this changing landscape? A student that begins primary school today will graduate from university in the mid-2030s and their career will last through 2060 or beyond. While we can’t predict exactly what our workforce’s needs will be in in the middle of the century, we already know they are changing and will continue to change with the rate of technological advancement. Yet, in most schools you visit in 2018, you see teachers teaching the exact same subject matter as they taught in 1918: reading, writing, math, science, history and foreign languages. Debates about the future of education centre on changing how we teach, […]

Scenarios for the future of geopolitics

The balance of power is shifting. To understand events in the international arena, it helps to distinguish whether our current period is essentially stable or in significant flux. In an article written a quarter of a century ago, during another time of rapid and relentless change, my co-author and I described the former type of period as a plateau phase, and the latter as one of historical transition. A series of recent developments suggests that the domestic political situations of several key players in the international arena are undergoing significant shifts, as are relations between players. Everything seems to indicate that the world is in another period of historical transition. A shortlist of the developments that point in this direction include: the breakdown of the political centre in several advanced democracies; centrifugal tendencies in the long-prevailing regional and international structures, of which the Brexit vote is one example; the accentuation of authoritarianism in Russia and China; and last, but certainly not least, the collapse of American moral leadership. Against this backdrop, how might we expect strategic relations to evolve in the next 20 years? In the short to mid-term, the key issue is the relationship between those powers that have been largely responsible for creating the post-WWII order, and those that are challenging it, in an effort to erect a new paradigm calling that order into question. In which direction this relationship is moving should become clear within the next five to ten years, and perhaps much sooner. There are essentially three possible outcomes. One is that the current Western-dominated paradigm manages to overcome its current weaknesses and disunity, creating space for and movement towards a renewed democratic revolution. In the process, it forges an environment in which the challenging powers can be successfully encouraged to integrate. Call […]

Tracking the battles for environmental justice: here are the world’s top 10

Author Julie Snorek Post-Doctoral Researcher, Environmental Justice Atlas, Autonomous University of Barcelona In Delhi, middle class residents and informal recyclers joined together to oppose the privatisation of waste management. EPA Environmental justice activism is to this age what the workers’ movement was for the industrial age – one of the most influential social movements of its time. Yet, despite its consistent progress since the 1970s, environmental justice protests seem to get lost in the morass of information on broader environmental issues. In contrast, labour conflicts, including strikes and lock-outs, carry such gravity that the International Labour Organisation tracks these on a systematic basis. As more communities are refusing to allow the destruction and contamination of their land, water, soil and air, these, in turn, deserve to be counted. The Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas), an inventory of social conflicts around environmental issues, fills that gap. It is funded by two successive European research projects, through a collective effort of scientists and activists. It records the failures and successes of the worldwide movement for environmental justice. The project is directed and coordinated by Leah Temper, Daniela Del Bene and Joan Martínez-Alier at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. It has collected and categorised about 2500 ecological distribution conflicts. These focus on who gains and who loses in development processes, arguing that these movements play a fundamental role in redefining and promoting sustainability. In honour of World Environment Day, on June 5th, some of the highlights of the most pertinent findings, stemming from the ten most critical categories of environmental distribution conflicts facing the world today are shown. These are listed in order of most-catalogued cases in the EJAtlas. But due to the nature of the project, this is not indicative of its global significance. The top ten environmental conflicts Land grabbing […]

What Can Save Capitalism from a Medici Cycle?

By Peter M.J. Gross Can truly free markets be protected from government interference? According to Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, government regulation may be necessary to keep markets free and competitive. He doubts whether it’s desirable, or even possible, for markets to operate without government oversight. In “Towards a Political Theory of the Firm,” Zingales theorizes that firms use their economic power to acquire political power. They then apply that political power to achieve greater economic gains, which in turn helps them acquire ever more political power. It’s a cycle Zingales likens to the Medici dynasty of 15th-century Florence, Italy. The Medicis leveraged their lending relationships with the Roman Catholic Church into considerable political influence in Renaissance Europe. If firms are naturally driven to seek political power and gain an insurmountable economic advantage, then government action may be the only way to prevent them from acquiring and exercising a degree of influence that dissuades or suppresses competition. However, not all government action is equal, and there are nuances involved, according to Zingales. He draws a distinction between being “pro-business” and “pro-market,”suggesting that the former phrase is commonly used to discuss policies that favor established businesses, and may actually stifle the ability of upstart companies to challenge them. Zingales considers himself pro-market and favors policies that encourage competition among firms in the marketplace. He says that to to support “growth, and innovation, new entry, and welfare of people, I think the pro-market is the right position.” Zingales says that the antitrust enforcement action taken against Microsoft, which began in 1998, was an example of political power applied to keep economic power in check and ensure healthy competition. As Zingales sees it, government intervention impeded Microsoft’s ability to monopolize the internet and created the opportunity for companies like Google and Facebook to develop. “Today’s monopolies […]

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