I decided to write about this Institute because of the last case study. During the research we came across Adidas AG, which was evaluated by this institute.

Since its establishment in May 1985, the IOeW has been able to extend its range of topics continuously. There are different interdisciplinary research teams, and each of them has developed its own access to socio-ecological questions.

This institution comprises several research fields, such as “Corporate Environmental Management”, “Ecological Economics and Environmental Policy”, “Regional Economic Policy/Sustainable Regional Development”, “Sustainable Consumption”, “Ecological Product Policy”, “Sustainable Energy and Climate Protection”.

I had a closer look on the “Corporate Environmental Management”. This field has shown that environmental protection and company success can indeed go together very well.The main points of research within this field focus on CSR, “sustainable corporate development” and “sustainable corporate governance”.

The IOeW develops and tests innovative methods and environmental protection instruments which enable companies to recognise, utilise and also extend their own framework of action in the interest of the environment.

Beside all the research and projects, the IOeW also organizes different workshops such as ASCEE Expert Workshop on Sustainable Consumption which takes place in the end of May in Brussels.The aim of this workshop is to “assess the potential of various instruments for sustainable consumption practices and greening of the market”.

This research was really interesting, because the IOeW is not only an organization which does evaluations on other companies; they also help to “educate” them by making them aware of the occurring problems.

While watching the movie “an inconvenient truth” I thought about, why American people react how they react, and why politicians are able to say things like “I do not believe in global warming”, without coming across as ridiculous to the population. And why they still vote Georg Bush, when they could have a president who is really ambitious to change something, to stop the pollution and the distruction of our planet and to improve the situation. The USA have so much economical power, which they have shown several times before, and so the real ability to change something through changing their habits and attitude and so being an example for rising powers like china and india and at the same time force them to do so to to maintain their relationship.

That this is not happening can in my opinion only be the result of a complete blindness of the people in the USA towards everything which is happening outside. When I hear politicians speaking I often think, how can people believe something that is that out of touch with reality? Don’t they want to see the inconvenient truth or do they really believe that this is not a matter of facts but a matter of belief?

Sarah brought up a lucid explanation today. It’s a matter of their education which not automatically includes subjects as geographics and history, the result is that they never waste a thought of what is happening outside of the USA. Naturally they do not react on matters as pollution and global warming because it feels as they do not affect them, this is outside the USA and that will not come across to them. They do not see that it’s about the whole planet in which they are a part.

So how to solve this issue? the only solution would be to change the education system, which is a long process. But how could they change the system with a president who are as blind as they are?

Personally I’m convinced that with the right politicians a change in the USA would be possible, but when will they vote someone who is able to, when they are happy how it is now, because in their opinion obviously nothing is wrong at the moment…

As we saw in class the European Program Agenda 21, I thought that it could be interesting to investigate a little bit how it has been launched in my own country. Moreover, in order to foment the Sustainable Development in the Basque business sector, it is essential that the future executives will be aware of the importance of this issue. In that way, the Basque Government has been doing really goord, as it is currently stimulating the “Environmental Basque Strategy of Sustainable Development 2002-2020 ” in that a commitment is gathered between others to taking up office in the area of the education.

The Agenda 21 is implanted already in 50 % of the school centers of compulsory education and the target for 2012 is to implant it in 100 % of the Schools.
To develop this commitment in 2002 an agreement of collaboration was signed among the Department of Land management and environment and the Department of Education, Universities and Investigation. So, they are working in different areas:
The annual work for the schools in this issue is organized taking as a base the Program of Environmental Education

1.Investigation and experimentation. The principal purpose of this line is to stimulate the innovation in environmental education, promoting projects, providing resources and investigating in collaboration with the centers.
2.Formation of the professorship. The update of the educational practice and the improvement of the processes of education – learning need the critical analysis and the formation, individual and of equipment.
3.Sensitization. To know the environmental problems, be aware and to wake the worry and care up on the way are the aimslenses of the programs of sensitization and the Territorial Meetings.

So far, the Basque Government is trying to foment the awareness of the children, so that in the future there will be well qualified executives taking care about the environment and preserving the Planet. It is a long term measure in which the major goal is to motivate and estimulate the new generations in order to avoid bigger environmental catastrophes.

What about your countries? What are the Government of you country are doing in the framework of Agenda 21? Are they carrying out any programs in the area of the education?

The “100 $ Laptop” is an educational program that aims to manufacture relatively cheap Laptops in order to allow the children of the developed countries to have access to modern education and technology. This project was initiated by OLPC (One Laptop per Child), a non-profit organization formed by faculty members of the MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

My initial impression about this project is very positive. It appears that such initiative has the ability to reduce the widening educational gap between developed and developing countries. But lets us not fall easily to our hopes and let us closely analyze this project.

The project clearly differentiates itself from other projects which try to recycle part of the 100 millions desktops. The project offers brand new laptops with a combination of modest and cutting edges capabilities. Instead of hard drives, the laptop will have a .5GB flash memory. It will have a wireless connection for peer-to-peer networks in ad-hoc manner as well as couple USB ports and a low cost display. A Linux based operating system will run a 500 MHz processor with 128 MB RAM.

The main goal of the project is to have students experience computers, play with it, write and even learn basic programming. The project hopes that governments will buy these laptops to its citizens.

Aiming to be objectively critical, there are a lot of negative and unconsidered aspects that can hinder the goal of sustainable education. First, many people believe that this project fits only the American and European lifestyles, where the children go to there already computerized school and return to their fully equipped houses, unlike the situation in Africa where children have other worries concerning their basic physical needs such as “seeking clean water and food”. Second, just providing laptops does not ensure that children will actually benefits from them. There is a need of skilled people who can direct the students in their initial explorations, a task usually done by school teachers and family members in the developed countries. Without proper guidance or sufficient learning resources, few will ever benefit and worse, laptops might be discarded due to the slightest software malfunction. Another issue is the fear that corrupted governments might abuse this project and use it to achieve some political ends. By restricting its gift to regional or ethnic or religious groups within the concerned developing country, political mafias destroys thus the concept behind the project, i.e. resulting in a total demolition of its child supportive spirit.

After considering the previous points, my positive impression was deeply shaken. Sure it is much better to light a candle than curse the dark, but in places where the words famine, starvation, child labor, discrimination, water scarcity are daily issues, the winds are still strong enough to shut off this candle.