CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL RIO+20 KATERVA REPORT:

Katerva%20Submission%20to%20Rio%2B20.pdf

Katerva CTO Dr Robin Wood attended the Rio+20 Consultation with business leaders held in the Hague 11-12 April 2012. His full report is attached, and below are the higlights of the recommendations Robin made during the final panel session on the priorities government leaders and the UN should take forward to Rio.

The vision of Katerva is to co-create the world's first open, global platform for change and sustainable innovation. To realise this on any meaningful scale, we must create a platform that is totally inclusive, transparent and accessible to all. The platform would, inter alia, perform the following functions:

•  Scan for and select the most viable, scalable, high impact and  unique solutions to the sustainability and thrival challenges we face on our planet- this would get the usually invisible dots of breakthrough innovations onto the global radar screen.

• Aggregate the world's data on and insights into high potential sustainability solutions, enabling us to co-create a family of indices that would culminate in a world sustainability index. This would provide comparability between the overwhelming number of initiatives that surface more or less at random on the radar screens of decision makers today.

• Provide a simple interface to these radar screens and indices for everyone from social enterprises in the African jungle to the penthouses of impact investors, through profiling and matching technologies.

• Enable users to connect the dots themselves, and then track their progress through a sustainable innovation self- assessment diagnostic, which also provides access to communities of global experts and capacity enhancers so that each brilliant dot can become part of it own cluster of remarkable initiatives, filling the gaps and driving synergies as needed.

• Celebrate the most successful and most improved initiatives and clusters, through the Katerva Awards.

• Convene the most influential and resourceful individuals and organizations on the planet each year to fast- track the most promising breakthrough innovations, through the Katerva World Sustainability Forum.

• Identify the major gaps that are not being addressed through existing initiatives, through the Katerva Institute, and assemble working groups of the most qualified experts and capacity builders to tackle and move toward a resolution of these issues.

• Streamline the funding process for the most promising initiatives which might struggle to raise mainstream funding.

How Rio+20 Can Help Scale GroundBreaking Sustainable Innovations

There are many industry specific sustainability initiatives and agendas that need to be accelerated by Rio, which industry leaders and the WBCSD are ideally positioned to champion. The interests and needs of SME's will also be championed by the ICC and other SME representatives. Civil society will also be very well represented. There is not currently a champion for breakthrough initiatives in the white spaces between all these entities.

Yet we know that without such groundbreaking innovations being spotted, calibrated and scaled, the acceleration we need to ensure we meet or even exceed the new Rio+20 SDG's will be missing. Corporations, SME's, civil society and governments will all want visibility of and connectivity to the most groundbreaking solutions. But how can we avoid them being captured by narrow interest groups who either want to extract maximum profit from them, or make them poster children for national champions? In other words, how can we create communities of common interest that will ensure that the best initiatives are scaled for the benefit of all, as fast as possible?

Based on a reading of draft zero of the Rio+20 document, we would humbly submit that much more detailed provisions be made with regard to the paragraphs 24, 33, 42, 74 and 76. The central emphasis of these paragraphs (see below for full text) is on

• reporting,
• knowledge sharing,
• skills and technology development and transfer,
• mapping and promotion of job creation especially amongst SME’s with an emphasis on innovative financing methods.

At Katerva we believe we can all benefit from bringing some of the latest approaches to breakthrough innovations from the leading edges of the hi-tech economy, in such a way that would significantly accelerate the goals set out by the UN in the Rio+20 draft zero. Our recommendations would include:

An open, global platform for change, sustainable innovation and development, which would provide a window into the different initiatives around the globe, thereby enabling stakeholders large and small, from entrepreneurs to corporations to civil society and governments, to map activity of interest to them and connect to partners that can enhance their efforts. This would align with the following Rio+20 proposals:

• The international knowledge-sharing platform proposed in para 33, with the best practice toolbox, progress indicators and green service directories.

• Skills & Technology Development & Transfer proposed in para 42, with new mechanisms to scale successful initiatives and back them with innovative financing techniques.

• A World Sustainability Index, which would enable every significant initiative that demonstrates viable, scalable, sustainable innovation, to be mapped and compared with the population of initiatives. This would enable potential investors, lenders, partners, donors, suppliers and customers to evaluate sustainability initiatives through the lens of their own particular profiles. The WSI would be a part of a family of indices incorporating the most used, relevant and effective existing indices, as well as integrating key data points and models from corporate and SME profiles and data feeds.

The WSI would align with the goals in paras 24, 33 and 42 of the Rio+20 proposals, and provide a focal point for creating visibility, accessibility and comparability across corporate, SME and civil society initiatives. We would recommend that this requires a shift in emphasis in these paragraphs from compliance and enforcement mechanisms to incentives which would encourage all players in the sustainable development game to engage with and use both the open global change platform and the WSI a way of growing their initiatives, businesses and communities.

Such an approach would significantly accelerate the ability of the diverse stakeholders required to incubate, fund, launch and scale sustainable, innovative development initiatives.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL RIO+20 KATERVA REPORT:

Katerva%20Submission%20to%20Rio%2B20.pdf

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