Strategies for tropical forest protection and sustainable supply chains: challenges and opportunities for alignment with the UN sustainable development goals

Governance for sustainable development increasingly involves diverse stakeholder groups, with the promise of enhanced legitimacy and effectiveness in decision-making and implementation. The UN sustainable development goals (SDGs) emphasise the important role of multiple (non-state) actors, including businesses and non-governmental organisations, including in efforts to ensure the sustainability of supply chains, and to reduce tropical deforestation and forest degradation. This paper critically analyses sustainability strategies to examine how the UN SDG agendas related to ‘sustainable supply chains’ and ‘tropical forest protection’ are framed and enacted by two contrasting non-state actors: (1) Instituto Centro de Vida (ICV), an NGO in Brazil working to address deforestation, including by supporting farmers to produce commodities, and (2) Unilever, a global consumer goods manufacturer and major buyer of such commodities. By identifying areas of variability in the discursive techniques used by ICV and Unilever, we unearth particular power dynamics that can shape the processes and outcomes of sustainability strategies. This paper finds that the two organisations use diverse strategies at different levels of governance, both participate actively in multi-stakeholder forums to advance their organisations’ goals, but have divergent framings of ‘sustainability’. Despite being considered ‘non-state’ actors, the strategies of the two organisations examined both reflect, and influence, the structural effects of the state in the implementation of non-state organisations’ strategies, and progress towards the SDGs. Although there is alignment of certain strategies related to tropical forest protection, in some cases, there is a risk that more sustainable, alternative approaches to governing forests and supply chains may be excluded

Activities Without Institutionalization: Limits and Lessons of TA and TA-Like Activities in Japan

Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation Policy 2009This presentation was part of the session : Other PapersThis material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder. ©2009 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.Even though the TA has not been institutionalized in Japan, there have been many TA and TA- like activities, in areas including food, healthcare, energy and technology strategy, since the idea of TA was introduce from the US. This paper analyzes the nature and limits of those TA and TA like activities; and the lessons for institutionalization of TA in the context of Japan are discussed, including the need for flexible framing and collaboration, the importance of appropriate distance, and the role of the Diet

Institutional Options and Operational Issues in Technology Assessment: Lessons from Experiences in the United States and Europe

Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation Policy 2009This presentation was part of the session : Other PapersThis material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder. ©2009 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.This paper illuminates widening variety of technology assessment (TA) activities by parliamentary organizations and other bodies in the United States and Europe. It also illustrates a range of institutional options for TA from the view of its key elements, and examines the operational issues. Based on extensive interviews with TA practitioners and other related actors, we identified the recent direction of TA activities and provide discussion materials for states and regions in which there is a growing concern about the institutionalization of TA functions

Global leadership for social design: Theoretical and educational perspectives

The rapid change of technological, social, and cultural structures is challenging universities to offer new educational programs. The Global Leader Program for Social Design and Management (GSDM) of the University of Tokyo can be seen as a forerunner in this field. The paper provides definitions of social design as well as of global leadership and provides a proposal for the definition of the objective of the GSDM program, i.e., multi-level resilient human–environment system. These subjects are embedded in the framework of human–environment systems (HES). We identified the different types of knowledge integration that ‘global leaders for social design’ should master. The core of a sustainable social design is to (1) properly conceptualize and manage “resilient coupled human-environment systems” and to (2) integrate or relate different systems, epistemics, interests, cultures, and knowledge systems. The specific challenge in this context is to cope with conflicting cultural–religious systems or to understand how the vulnerability of different human systems with respect to digital environments. Social design is conceived as all rules, mechanisms, and preferences that govern the interaction of humans with material, biophysical, technological, and socio-cultural epistemic environments. The goal of education for global leadership for social design may have to progress from the T-shaped skills profile (i.e., being specialized in one discipline and having the capability to collaborate with other disciplines) to the π-profile. Students for leadership in global designs must be qualified in a social and an engineering/natural science and literate and capable to know, relate, and govern different disciplines, cultures, or systems which have to be included in the sustainable transitioning of cultural and socio-technological systems. The paper elaborates in what way transdisciplinarity is needed and why resilience management should be seen as a proper objective of GSDM. The challenges of the new educational program for the science system and institutions as well as for students and professors are discussed

Electron and positron scattering from the benzene derivative: Toluene

Electron and positron cross sections for scattering from toluene molecules have been investigated both experimentally and theoretically over the energy range 0.4-1000 eV. Peaks have been observed in the electron total cross sections (TCSs) at 1.4, 4.5, and 8.0 and a shoulder at about 40 eV. Vibrational and elastic differential cross section experiments were carried out to probe the origin and nature of these peaks. The continuum multiple scattering method was used to calculate elastic integral cross sections for electron impact. Although the 1.4 eV peak is dominated by the elastic channel, strong contributions from the CH3 asymmetric bending and stretching vibrational modes are also observed. The 4.5 eV feature is also observed to be strongly due to vibrational excitation. The broad 7-13 eV peak includes contributions from the CH3 asymmetric bending (peaked at 7 eV) and the CH3 stretching (peaked at 9.5 eV) vibrational modes. Positron TCSs are studied and compared to positron-benzene TCSs. The effect of the CH3 substitution is observed to make a significant contribution to both electron and positron TCSs below 20 eV

Design for IoT Business Modeling Workshop: A Case Study of Collaborative University–Industry Education Program

Part 5: Education in the Field of Industry 4.0International audienceOn January 11, 2017, Waseda University launched a university–industry collaboration program with a local government body in Kitakyushu City, Japan and 20 local businesses in the area. Officially called the “Waseda University IPS Kitakyushu Consortium (IPSKC),” the program aims to change the direction of local society and to develop innovative business and technology solutions in the era of Industry 4.0. In addition, it seeks to contribute to future global business development with neighboring Asian countries. As a first step, one of the program’s key initiatives was to offer consortium members an Internet of Things (IoT) business modeling workshop as part of the University’s industrial IoT/business engineering education program. This paper discusses an approach to facilitate workstream as a case study. We present the key results of the workshop; and discuss the future outlook of IoT and PLM education program