Only real win-win scenario

Image capture from www.worldometers.info on December 31st, 2015, at 18:00 GMT.

Another year has passed with a gigantic human footprint on the planet, unfortunately a very negative one. Yet, there are reasons to revitalize optimism in the wake of 2016. By some accounts, 2015 saw a worldwide reduction in carbon emissions in relation to economic growth, which would confirm a tendency already suggested in 2014, when emissions remained constant even though the global economy grew. But that’s not the point. The point is that we are still pouring 35 billion metric tons of a highly toxic gas that will remain in the atmosphere for centuries, as a result of aggregate human activity in all corners of the planet. [To put this figure in perspective, a metric ton of carbon fills up a sphere that is 10 meters in diameter and if we would enter in it, we would die in less than 10 minutes.]

At this stage of the XXI Century, no one can deny, question or pretend to ignore the effect civilization has on the atmosphere, precisely the bubble that holds the conditions to support life on Earth, the only planet in the known universe of which we have scientific proof that life exists.

It is urgent for our generation, as it starts to take the lead worldwide in high-impact, public and private decision-making, to place, atop our list of strategic priorities, innovation and design to reinvent all human endeavors and channel them towards a new paradigm of regenerative development. It suggests to create and distribute wealth while recovering natural capital, which is the source of all inputs and raw materials used in agricultural, industrial and digital production and provision of services, and, at the same time, enables the flourishing and coexistence of all life forms that precisely enrich and feed back into that very capital. This is the only real win-win scenario there is.

I am not suggesting abandoning capitalism, consumerism or hedonism. Each person must be individually responsible for his or her ideologies, ideals and values. It is, nevertheless, absolutely mandatory, to unconditionally comply with the ethical maxim of sustainability, so that all life forms fit in the planet forever. There is no business on a dead planet and we have no plan(et) B.

The climate action required by the Earth is not a responsibility or interest of a few of us. Everyone, without exception, is a crew member on this spacecraft that travels at a very high velocity around the sun, within the solar system, inside a galaxy among billions in a universe that keeps expanding into the vast unknown. We must learn fast and implement public and private policies that result in regenerative development, since there is nothing more important for any rational, sensible and sane human organization –be it a corporation, school, cult or family— to guarantee its existence beyond the lifespan of their current members.

More of this is what we need urgently, and I mean, a matter of life or death. I know 2016 will bring greater climatic challenges and a more shocking reality, but also a more authentic and effective leadership in search for solutions. It is not difficult to achieve the required transformation, but it is certainly impossible if we do not try.

Opening Remarks at Inauguration Session, United Nations University

Opening Remarks

United Nations University

Professor Dr. David Malone, Rector at UNU,

Professor Dr. Kazuhiko Takeuchi-san, Vice-rector and director of the Peace and Sustainability Institute,

Distinguished government officials,

Fellow members of the diplomatic corps,

UNU students, faculty and staff,

Dear friends,

Good morning. I thank you all for being here. I have prepared a few words with a special dedication to the students that start today a five-week intensive course that will certainly transform your lives in many ways.

Last year I had the privilege of attending the closing event, where students like you presented their group projects to a guest panel of which I was a part of, and it struck me how much knowledge was invested by the participants to create ideas that would not have existed otherwise.

It was a very good example of creation of shared value: to bring your individual strengths together in order to give life to something that you would not have been able to create individually or separately. It is a precise illustration of synergy. I believe this is what you are here to do from now until mid October.

Allow me to share a brief story about my family. My great-grandfather was born in the XIX Century and passed away at the age of 96. My relatives say I inherited his big hands and I guess that’s why I decided not to become a dentist. My two grandmothers are 98 years old. With one of them I speak every Saturday on the phone. I like to ask her for suggestions about how she has managed to live for so long in such good condition, and her reply is always along the lines of how she took care of her health.

It makes me wonder if I conduct myself in the same healthy way or if my circumstances and choices are detrimental to my genetic longevity. It also makes me wonder how different her XX Century was from this XXI Century we live in.

Every year of this XXI Century so far, humanity has produced in excess of 30 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, a figure too big to understand. Simultaneously, the planet has been losing as much as a quarter of a million square kilometers of fertile biomass through deforestation, soil erosion and desertification. To put this figure into context, it is the equivalent of losing all of Japan’s forest coverage every year.

Not only are we releasing excessively large amounts of a highly toxic gas into the very air we breathe, but also the vegetation that could clean such pollution is being reduced at an astoundingly accelerated speed. It makes me wonder how much more human behavior can the planet sustain. We are, clearly, on a collision course.

Science, although limited in its ability to explain the extent of the problem, at least has proof that human-made CO2 emissions in the atmosphere are altering global climatic patterns, disrupting a balance that has remained within a normal range of stability for the last 4 million years. The pace of environmental change is faster than it has occurred at any other period in recorded geological history.

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My favorite definition of “conflict” is simply an incompatibility of goals. What I just described is a global conflict that involves all of humankind and also all other forms of life: we cannot continue our collective behavior if we want to survive and thrive as a civilization on the only planet known to science where life exists. This is the greatest and gravest conflict humankind has ever faced, especially due to the vast extent of its consequences.

My favorite definition of peace, paraphrasing Johan Galtung, is

“the ability to transform conflicts empathically, creatively and harmoniously.”

If we assume it as valid, it helps us focus on what is essential in order to transform any conflict, even climate change. The first one is empathy -which is to stand on someone else’s shoes- not only among us humans, but also with other species that are threatened with extinction. The second one is creativity. Einstein said we could not overcome our problems thinking in the same way we did when we fell into them. So we must be creative. And the third one is harmony, or the sensitivity to move towards scenarios of prosperity with the least possible violence or suffering.

Unlike 100 years ago, today there are global citizens that can exercise their leadership towards effectively transforming the most severe global issues. These are the people concerned and involved in issues that go beyond their place of birth, their place of residence or the state that issued their passport. It is the people that understand that what happens in Asia, does not stay in Asia, but affects Africa, Europe and the Americas.

I believe that global citizens share, at least, six characteristics: an understanding of different leadership styles; cultural sensitivity to better adapt to different cultural settings; the capability to facilitate or mediate in situations of conflict; effective communication techniques that allow them to express themselves assertively; negotiation skills; and a sense of global ethics, or clarity about virtue and good in all cultural contexts.

I believe all of you are global citizens, whether you chose to become or not. I also believe that in the course of the coming five weeks, you will come across many situations with your peers where you will realize that you are actively engaging as global citizens dealing with issues that were unfamiliar to you this morning.

What I find most fascinating about global citizenship is that it is an ongoing learning process that is never finished. You can always learn more, study more, listen more, and grow more. Be aware, throughout this academic experience, how much you will be consolidating your global citizenship among your colleagues from different countries, and perhaps most importantly, living in one of the most global cities in the world.

Yesterday’s designation of Tokyo as the hosting city of the 2020 Olympics is a confirmation of its relevance worldwide. Moreover, Fortune magazine ranks Tokyo as the second most global city in the world in terms of the economic impact and political influence of the decisions that are made here by 47 of the largest corporations in the world whose headquarters are located in the city.

Not only Tokyo offers a unique opportunity to expand your global citizenship. According to the Global Peace Index, Japan ranks in the top 10 most peaceful nations on Earth. This is a more remarkable fact considering that 125 million people live in a country that has up to 72% forest coverage, which leaves only a small fraction of the territory for human settlements. Given such high demographic density, it is impressive that the level of conflict and violence is so low in Japan.

What have the Japanese done differently compared to other countries in the world? I leave you with this question so you explore in the coming weeks with your colleagues. I am confident you will discover elements that will enrich your communities back home.

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Reflecting back on the definitions of conflict and peace that I introduced before, global citizens shall become mindful that humankind will not be able to transform global conflicts through military force. Every year, the world spends collectively US$1.7 trillion dollars in military armament. This is ten times larger than what the United Nations suggests is necessary every year to invest in climate change adaptation and the completion of the Millennium Development Goals together. To make it more absurd, no climate-related catastrophe can be stopped with weapons.

Even military generals are now confirming what ecologists have been suggesting for decades, that one of the biggest threats to peace and security in the coming years is climate change.

Therefore, what we need is a special kind of peace: a peace with nature. We must recover the planet’s biocapacity and its ability to generate all the natural resources we consume every day in every corner of the world. We must be empathic towards other life forms and preserve the rich forests that still stand, most of which are in developing countries in Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America. We must innovate towards greater energy efficiency, including renewable sources of electricity, smart city technologies to allow for a greater quality of life with a lower demand of energy, and a more efficient management of other non-renewable natural resources and raw materials.

I strongly believe we can do what is required to achieve such peace with nature. I suggest that we can get there through bioliteracy, or the ability to understand the language of life, like the water cycle, the carbon cycle, the fertility process that describes all natural ecosystems, the comprehension of human’s ecological footprint on the planet and the many huge opportunities to develop green infrastructure in a way that is financially, socially and environmentally sustainable.

This is not just wishful thinking. Since 2011, the OECD -Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development- has been proposing green growth as an international policy for economic growth. One day in the near future, green growth will come to us. Let’s not wait for that day. Let’s go to it! Let’s utilize our global citizenship, our leadership skills, techniques, and ethics to take the advantages that green growth represents for this Century.

We are the only generation in human civilization that has faced a global challenge of such proportions. The opportunities for transformation are right before our eyes. All we need is to understand the conflict in order to understand the ways to solve it.

Allow me to share another personal reflection. In two months, my wife will give birth to our first child. If my child has the same genetic longevity of my ancestors, this means he or she will be 87 years old at the turn of the XXII Century. None of us in this room will be alive then, but probably my child will, and more likely, his or her children will too. I am aware that I represent a bridge in my family between the XIX and the XXII centuries. This is why, to me, global environmental change is personal. It is a battle I choose to fight, and I encourage you do the same.

Let me finish with a quote from a book I read last week that made me think of you:

"Inspiration is a magical thing, a productivity multiplier, a motivator. But it won't wait for you. Inspiration is a NOW thing. If it grabs you, grab it right back and put it to work."

…

Thank you.

Tokyo, Japan

Sept. 9^th, 2013

From Demilitarization to Bioliteracy: How Costa Rica has Become a Biodiversity-Friendly Country

One of the most well-known facts about Costa Rica is the elimination of its military army in 1948. The long-term, positive impact this decision has had in the nation’s development is a collection of benefits that we are still discovering and learning about as we move forward. You may be thinking: what does demilitarization have to do with biodiversity?

For 64 years, several generations of Costa Ricans have been born under a State that has a very high regard for human life. Having no military implies that under no circumstance, a political conflict will become violent through the use of weapons. It also implies that no aggressor, no invader, no trespasser that attempts to violate the country’s territorial integrity or sovereignty will ever be repealed using institutional, violent means.

This decision has shaped the mindset, culture and professional choices of millions of people throughout the last few decades. Most importantly, it has built in many of us the awareness and sensitivity to appreciate life in all its forms, since we have not been taught or raised to end, destroy or offend the lives of other humans.

The conditions of peace that Costa Rica has offered since 1948 have allowed many people to develop expertise in science, arts and humanities, a possibility that is unfortunately difficult in nations that endure long, violent conflicts. Since the 1950s, Costa Rican professionals specialized in fields that offered optimal learning conditions in the country’s natural environment. Today it is a very pleasant part of our history that renewable energies were developed since 1955 as an opportunity to generate electricity from the abundant sources of hydropower along several of the country’s rivers, lakes and waterfalls.

One of the results of these peaceful conditions for human development has been a growing bioliteracy over generations. I would define bioliteracy as the understanding of ecological processes and the richness that derives from them. In a country with outstanding natural characteristics, one is very frequently faced with amazing natural beauty and wealth, making it easier to develop empathy and appreciation for birds and snakes, trees and flowers, whales and dolphins that visit and live in Costa Rica. 

This bioliteracy has facilitated the adoption of the mentality “know-save-use” regarding biodiversity. First, it is important to know the natural wealth in a country’s surrounding ecosystems. As you hear a bird sing or appreciate a colorful tree blossom or experience the might of a whale in open ocean, it is easy to feel a connection with other life forms. Then, making political and economic efforts to preserve ecosystems and save species is more likely, as there is high awareness of such unique high concentration of living organisms in a fairly small territory like Costa Rica. As a result, the use of natural resources for human development and economic growth will happen in observance of other living beings.

This poses an interesting dilemma that needs to be decided by every generation’s leaders: should progress cost us our natural environment? In 1979, leaders chose to stop deforestation, preserve remaining forests and recover the ones that had been lost. A few people made an invaluable contribution to Costa Rica’s biodiversity by implementing an innovative policy that offered economic incentives for conservation. Today, we talk about Payment for Environmental Services, and it is said to be a policy innovation made in Costa Rica. This has recovered nearly half a million hectares of forests, transferring to property owners some US$200 million (JP¥16,000,000,000) in the course of three decades of public, private and international efforts.

In times when humanity’s consumption of renewable and nonrenewable natural resources provokes an ecological footprint that far exceeds the planet’s ability to naturally recover and replenish them, Costa Rica has become the focus of international attention as a result of the country’s economic success while simultaneously reforesting and improving ecosystemic performance. In the last 30 years, Costa Rican GDP has tripled and forest coverage has doubled. This, more than a case of sustainable development, is a case of regenerative development. Instead of setting the goal of not harming nature, Costa Rica has accomplished the goal of enriching nature while improving socioeconomic conditions for its people.

Innovation and entrepreneurship have become important components of this process. In 1989, a group of local and foreign visionary experts followed Dr. Rodrigo Gámez’s initiative to create the Biodiversity Institute, a non-governmental, not-for-profit institution that has been declared of public interest by the government, due to its enormous contribution to environmental conservation, scientific discoveries, bioliteracy and ecosystemic recovery. A few weeks ago, at the COP 11 that took place at Hyderabad, India, Dr. Gámez was awarded the AEON Foundation Midori Prize of Biodiversity, a well-deserved recognition for his efforts to improve the quality of all forms of life on Earth.

For nearly 25 years, the Costa Rican tourist industry has become instrumental in the promotion of ecological tourism, offering abundant business opportunities that have triggered private innovation in the form of ecological activities such as canopy or tree rappelling, surfing and river rafting, as well as tours for bird-watching, whale-watching and turtle-watching.

Public innovation has also played a significant role in the process of improving facilities and conditions for tourists to enjoy nature intensely. In 1996, a public program called Ecological Blue Flag was introduced to promote a healthy competition between tourist destinations, nature reserves and national parks, hotels and government institutions, to comply with sustainability requirements in order to obtain a blue flag that is to be displayed publicly. Every year, each entity must renew its “blue flag” status, raising national and international awareness about these efforts, which attract tourists by the hundreds of thousands.

In 1999, Costa Rica received one million foreign tourists for the first time. Ten years later, it reached two million, despite terrorist attacks in New York or the global economic recession.

Today, the country’s aspiration is to become a global leader in green growth, promoting regenerative development through ecological tourism, commercial use of biodiversity for biotechnology and attracting more modern technologies for renewable energy generation. With this strategy in place, a strong relationship with a country like Japan could create shared value for mutual benefit, and also for the benefit of people from other countries and even for other forms of life.

I hope I have managed to explain the relationship between demilitarization and biodiversity, and explain why Costa Rica means “rich coast” in Spanish, and why it is recognized as the country that has made Peace with Nature.

Transforming Global Conflict #3: Courage, Bravery and Entrepreneurial Spirit

No one can take on the world alone. Everyone needs a flourishing network of contacts that effectively builds a community of leaders that share a common purpose. This is the same for a small or large business as it is for a not-for-profit endeavor. Building such networks requires taking a step outside one’s comfort zone, which implies an act of courage. In fact, not everyone does it, although anybody can.

Transforming global conflicts requires a wide array of leaders of all sorts to make individual acts of courage and hope that those efforts meet, mix and match with the efforts of others, therefore building that community network that will alter a particular reality upon which one intends to influence.

Defying fear is the first challenge humanity must embrace. Fortunately, it is something we are hardwired for. Even waking up to an unknown, uncertain world is an act of defiance. Together, all these acts of individual courage build up our bravery, which, brought together as a civilization, conform our human character. The reminder is worth noting because, as societal, economic and environmental challenges loom large, human character will be called upon to harness our aspiring resolve for prosperity.

Such traits that define us also determine success in our ability to create new institutions that create value. The entrepreneurial spirit required to wander the forest in search of food is the same employed to build a new tool that improves our quality of life, and also to replicate it, sell it, and improve it over time.

Tackling the most severe conflicts in today’s world requires a systemic vision to perceive the intense and regenerating resources within and the systemic scenarios without, thinking innovatively about ways to make them meet, mix and match.

Innovation by Opportunity: Costa Rica-Japan Bilateral Green Growth Agenda

[Presentation today at Chi-In-Kai breakfast at Imperial Hotel - Tokyo, Japan]

Good morning. It is a great honor to be here addressing such a distinguished audience. I met Mr. Seiichi Mizuno in September last year and we had an interesting conversation. He later invited me to speak here so it is my pleasure to meet him again and thank him for the invitation.

The topic I will present today is a short list of topics that would allow both Costa Rica and Japan to interact in the quest of economic growth and human development while at the same time preserving, restoring and regenerating natural ecosystems and biodiversity.

Modern information and connectivity have allowed us to realize that the major problems we face today are of a global dimension. They are not caused in any single country and they do not affect individual nations. They are caused by the way in which 7 billion human beings behave on an increasingly constrained planet.

Addressing these issues will require global coordination, not only by all countries represented in the United Nations, but also by all public, private, academic and not-for-profit organizations worldwide. Every single citizen of the world is a global citizen and we must contribute to solving global issues.

My main concern is that we have not been raised to think and behave as global citizens and this is something we must learn quickly. I see my field of work as one in which traditional diplomacy has focused mainly on national interests. Today, the time we spend discussing national issues is time we take away from discussing global issues.

Innovation by Opportunity is a methodology that introduces design thinking as a way to transform our conflicts creatively. It consists of two processes: first, to identify national strengths in a comparative analysis with other countries, and also to identify opportunities for synergic innovation. And second, to identify the constraints we face globally and adapt our search for solutions within those limits. Practicing this method repeatedly will drive and advance our global problem-solving dynamics.

I wish to remind a famous quote by Albert Einstein, who once said: “We cannot solve our problems thinking in the same way we did when we fell into them.” So we need to think different.

I find it remarkable that before the world started talking about globalization, Japanese brands, technology and culture had already become global. Sony and Mazinger Z, Toyota and Komatsu, sushi and Nintendo conquered the world decades ago. This was the result of Japanese design and technology considering local constraints of high demographic concentration and very limited natural resources in Japan.

These principles need to be embraced today globally. We need to think as a human civilization the same way Japanese innovators thought 50 years ago. The difference is that our relatively high demographic concentration is now global and our natural resource constraints are also global. Scientists at the Global Footprint Network have calculated that, in order to sustain current global consumption levels of natural resources, we would need 1.5 planets, which means we are living beyond the planet’s natural ability to regenerate itself, or that we are consuming from future generations.

I see Japanese organizations today greatly concerned about how to embrace globalization for their products and services. My suggestion to Japanese innovators today would be to readapt the mindset of their constraints from local to global and design for the planet, not only for the Japanese society. Then we will see a renovated Japanese globalization.

As global citizens, we need to identify a code of conduct that can be applied in every culture around the world. For example, the Japanese nation learned 600 years ago that if you cut down your trees you would run out of water. This is a lesson that applies to all forests around the world and that needs to be learned by many nations that are still actively deforesting.

Another example is Costa Rica eliminating its military army since 1948. By 2010, the world spent more than US$1.6 trillion in military armament. That is sufficient money to cover all costs of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals and all costs of Climate Change adaptation together more than ten times.

Last December, the Costa Rican President visited Japan to propose a bilateral green growth agenda relating to four main topics: renewable energies, economic valuation of ecosystems and biodiversity, biotechnology and climate change policy.

In renewable energies, Costa Rica already generates 95% of its electricity from renewable sources such as hydro, geothermal, wind and biomass generation. Japan is setting the goal to increase by 5 times its renewable generation by 2020. This means growing from 6 gigawatts of installed capacity to 30 gigawatts in less than 10 years. This is equivalent to 8 times Costa Rica’s renewable energy installed capacity. Costa Rica’s proposal is that Japanese new technologies be experimented in Costa Rica, where there are abundant natural resources like sunlight, wind, volcanoes, and ocean water temperatures that allow ocean researching every day of the year without the risk of typhoons or the cold temperatures during the winter months.

In Ecosystems and Biodiversity, Costa Rica is a world pioneer in sustainable tourism. Millions of tourists visit the country to engage in activities that preserve the natural environment, promote growth and development of rural communities and offering bio-literacy to understand ecological principles. For example, whale-watching has become a very popular activity among tourists who visit Costa Rica to watch whales in their natural habitats breathing and breeding their offspring in the warm tropical waters of Costa Rica. It has been recently calculated that the whale-watching industry generates approximately US$31 million per year to Costa Rica, while preserving whales and their ecosystems.

Regarding biotechnology, Japan is a global power in biotechnological research and innovation of food and cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, medical devices and chemicals. The Nagoya Protocol of the Convention on Biological Diversity signed in Nagoya in October 2010 aims at sharing the benefits arising from genetic resources. Costa Rica has been identified as the richest hotspot in biodiversity density and it has been researching and classifying its biodiversity for more than 25 years. The natural resource we have for biotechnological research and innovation is enormous and we are seeking for strategic partners to develop and commercialize these natural resources.

Precisely, creating shared value is what Costa Rica intends. We see synergy as the interaction that generates mutual gains and we see it as a triple-win scenario in which Costa Rica, Japan and the world gain from it. So if we managed to bring Japanese researchers and technology to our forests and laboratories we could produce together innovation that serves humanity and at the same time preserves these forests that actually belong to the planet.

This kind of human development combined with economic growth while at the same time preserving, restoring and regenerating ecosystems and biodiversity is a way in which a bilateral green growth agenda between Costa Rica and Japan could represent a creative solution to some of our global conflicts.

Arigato gozaimasu!

Reminder of Urgency

As 2012 moves along, we tend to get caught up in domestic and international politics, trade and unemployment figures. Meanwhile, the most pressing issue civilization has ever faced continues to increase in gravity. Human-made climate change has provoked the unpredictability of climactic patterns, augmented the intensity and frequency of climate-related disasters, and has worsened the constraints for human development.

In 2011 alone, 5.2 million hectares of forest coverage were lost, along with 7 million hectares of fertile land lost to erosion and 12 million hectares of land that turned into desert. This adds up to almost 250,000 square kilometers, a surface area larger than many countries.

These figures make us wonder: how much forest coverage and fertile land are required to support a human population that tends to reach 9 billion by 2050? What is the economic value of environmental services that humanity enjoys for free from nature? Can we afford to continue behaving in this way?

At the pace we are degrading the natural environment, humanity risks reaching critical ecosystemic tipping points beyond which extinction of biodiversity will accelerate, changing the condition of life on the planet like it has not been altered in millions of years.

Our top priority must be to revert the causes of this systemic failure threatening with civilizational collapse and adapt to rapidly occurring changes in our environment. Without healthy ecosystems there are no peacefully coexisting societies, and without these, no thriving market economies or financial expansion.

Peace, wealth, growth, development and comfort are intricately linked to the quality of biodiversity and ecosystems.

Preliminary Considerations on Intercultural Ethics

It is mandatory that we identify more opportunities to create change in the way we interact with one another and with other living beings. Symbiosis is the intricate co-dependency between species in any and all ecosystems. Unfortunately, humans have grown to believe that we reign over the rest of plants and animals on the planet and that we dispose of them with a sense of ownership that empowers us to even destroy what we believe belongs to us. Right or wrong, the truth is that we cannot survive without clean air and drinkable water, and the process of cleaning air and water in the planet relies, almost entirely, on trees in our dense forests in Latin America and Africa and Southeast Asia, where most rainforests still remain. As Jared Diamond wonders about the defunct inhabitants of Easter Island, what did the person that cut down the last tree on the island think as she was chopping it down?

Of course, the most expected response to this question is denial: there are still plenty a tree around to think about this question. True. But this denial has led humanity to reduce forest coverage as much as five million hectares, cause a loss of land to soil erosion of seven million hectares, and lead to the desertification of fertile land to almost 12 million hectares. The scariest thing is that these statistics are for 2011 alone. At this pace, the question is not whether or when will we run out of trees. The critical question is how much are we reducing nature’s capability to renew itself to continue cleaning our air and water, especially when, also in 2011, human industry managed to generate 33.5 billion metric tons of CO2.

When I say it is mandatory to seek change, I am not suggesting that it is mandatory by force of law or market incentive or sanction –say, like a carbon tax. Instead, it is an ethical mandate that crosses borders and cultures, gender and socioeconomic status. Survival on the planet lies on the symbiosis that must exist between animals and plants, oceans and skies, as a single and perfectly integrated system that has worked flawlessly for millions of years and has only been disrupted by the footprint of just a few generations of humans roaming the Earth.

This is not too hard to understand. Anyone who studied the water cycle in third grade science knows what I am talking about here. It is far more difficult, I presume, to change course of what we are doing on a daily basis that is causing so much irreparable damage. It is partly due to the fact that it is more complex to comprehend the connection between a beef patty on your burger and the corresponding carbon emissions attached to the transportation of that meat from Uruguay to Singapore, as well as the emissions generated where forest has been transformed into grassland to produce beef meat. In this particular example, when a tree has been chopped down to clear land for agricultural production, the calculation of CO2 emissions is inestimable, since a tree acts as a vacuum of carbon dioxide, and cutting it down reduces the planet’s ability to absorb those emissions permanently.

This is a hard fact and a solid truth in any language, for every religion, in every small village in the world. This is why the ethical mandate is of intercultural characteristics. Whoever cut or burned down those five million hectares of forests in 2011 affects you and me and them alike. We may consider the reasons as to why people do that, whether lack of information or the presence of very strong, monetary incentives. One thing is that a person knows that cutting a tree damages the environment and his own ability to actually grow food to put on his table, and another very different one is understanding that, in order to buy the bottled drink or mobile phone he will need money to do so. This is a microcosm of the trade-off that takes place billions of times every day around the world: doing what is right for the environment by planting a tree or choosing a different product with a lower ecological impact, or going for the immediate hedonistic satisfaction that only money can buy.

The reason why I consider the mandate that is calling is of an ethical nature is precisely because we are reducing the quality of our own lives and increasing exponentially the risk of health and safety for future generations. There is another reason why it is critical that we revise our priorities as human civilization based on ethics and values: because there has never been so much monetary wealth to go around in our history, it is despicable to know that as many as one hundred thousand people die every day from preventable causes, whether lack of proper hygiene, drinking water, malnourishment, diseases that should have been already eradicated, or violent armed conflict.

As it seems, prosperity is not correlated to monetary wealth. Even people that live well off are mistaken if they believe that they are prosperous because they are rich, because, as long as our natural capital is decreasing, we are all worse off. This trend of loss of wealth has been occurring for over two decades now, and as long as we continue to measure our wealth in coins, we will be oblivious to the reality that each and every coin, as well as every single gold bar is backed by a portion of the planet’s limited –and decreasing- natural environment.

Leadership Crisis at the Core of our Conflicts

Human life has never been so resourceful. We produce more food than we eat (although it is consumed unequally); science and technology have brought us to an era of hyper-modernity unthought of only a quarter century ago; the flow and access of information is unlimited in volume and at near zero cost; entertainment is amusing and at the tip of our fingers.

Yet, humanity has never faced so many and so dire and complex crises in its history: disease and preventable death among children, armed confrontation and high homicide rates, discrimination towards women, attacks against people with different religious background, ideological clashes, environmental degradation.

Some people believe there are too many humans on the planet. Others think the planet could hold up to 18 billion humans if lifestyle was truly sustainable.

Meanwhile, I perceive a dramatic lack of leadership at all levels. That is no surprise. We have been brought up to follow others' leadership: a religious authority, a school teacher, a government officer, a boss. This has blinded us from our own, individual leadership. We practice it since we learn how to walk and we voluntarily choose in which direction to go and discover our Universe. But faster than we think, our leadership is shadowed by that of others. We must discover the leader within.

Perhaps the gravest problem is not being aware of the need to have collective leadership, which is not achieved by one person instructing what to do, but by many -all of us- moving in the direction of common interests. Like feeding the hungry, curing the sick, empowering women, accepting religious differences, restoring nature.

Our world is in urgent need for solutions. We must have common objectives (perhaps the U.N. has already done an outstanding job at that), we must aspire to them, and we must understand the consequences of not doing so. Look around you. So much freedom to choose what to do with our spare time, buy the latest gadget, travel to a more remote tourist destination, be the first one to be entertained, has in fact enslaved us. Which is the greatest paradox of modern life: the more freedom we have, the more it enslaves us. And still, we have the same 24 hours per day our ancestors had, so it all seems to boil down to time.

And to virtue: how we use that time to serve the common good is a critical factor to prosperity. We can aspire to all the individual happiness we like, and to all the well-being for our family and relatives that we can, but this does not mean we are prosperous. Prosperity is the improvement in the quality of life of all life on Earth. We are seriously far from that. Once again, the bottom line seems to be ethics, or the lack thereof.

A Planet made of Diamond

In recent weeks, the scientific community has congratulated itself for the discovery of a planet that is composed of a carbonic substance similar to what we know here on Earth as diamond. Not so fast, jewelers! It is 4000 light years away.

The method to confirm this discovery is the good old scientific method: observation, simulation, hypothesis, testing, confirmation, peer reviews by anonymous, qualified scientists. In the words of Dr. Matthew Bailies, it is likely to be the greatest scientific discovery of his career.

He very quickly shuns pride for the achievement and wonders why, if the scientific community and the specialized and general public are cheering for such discovery, is it not possible to be consistent with scientific discovery following the scientific method that proves, without reasonable doubt, that human behavior with the Earth's natural resources is causing a net negative impact on the world's ecosystem?

The question is pertinent. A group of scientists identify a body in outer space that would take 4000 years to arrive at if we traveled at the speed of light, but the samples collected for decades from all possible locations on our planet are disregarded as sufficient proof of anthropogenic interference -that is, caused by humans- in our ecosystem.

It may not be a matter of method. If we wonder what would happen if exhaust fumes from combustion engines would stay at surface level instead of flying kilometers up into the atmosphere, we would have gotten sick from them half a century ago and we would have probably solved the problem by now.

It may be a matter of belief. Some people choose to believe there is no anthropogenic climate change because they don't see it. Some others choose to ignore its existence or become indifferent to it because it would imply changing the comfortable life that at least 1 billion people on the planet (14% of us) have achieved through technology, energy, safety, market economies, food availability, health, entertainment, etc.

Unfortunately, it may also be a question of incentives: some people may be receiving monetary gains from the lifestyle and processes that are involved with human contamination of nature. I am almost sure that if my father was an important shareholder of a Big Oil Company I would find it more difficult to criticize pollution from carbon emissions and green house gases.

Which leads us to the field of ethics, that moral ground that we used to have and may have escaped this generation of new leaders that we are forming. More on this later.

A Monumental Change of Mind

After the first seven days in Japan, the most remarkable difference I have found from the last time I was here two years ago is a dramatic change of mind in the Japanese people -corporations, civil society, public officials- regarding consumption, most particularly of energy. Private enterprises have reduced their working schedule during the summer months; people have relaxed their outfits; government officials are incessantly searching for new energy outlets to reduce.

The summer dress for the summer is called "cool biz" and consists of short-sleeved button-down shirts, no tie, no coat. Air conditioning has been turned up to 28C and metro cars have fluorescent lights missing. All of this is the result of a sudden energy constraint that surged in Japan after the Great Eastern Earthquake of Tohoku on March 11. That day, four of the main nuclear sources of electricity in the country which were very close to the epicenter of the temblor went offline. The nation faced electricity shortages, and quickly opted for a significant reduction in consumption to make sure there was sufficient energy for everyone's basic needs.

A country that for centuries has been very concerned about their fragile environment knows about reducing consumption. Six centuries ago, Japanese understood that if they continued cutting down trees they would run out of water. So they started preserving their forests and today the country has 72% forest coverage, a figure very hard to imitate in other latitudes. Japanese cuisine is characterized by low energy consumption: who doesn't like a strip of raw fish on top of a ball of rice?

I have heard unofficially that the goal is for the nation to reduce 30% of its electricity consumption. That sounds to me like a more ambitious goal than the one set for developed economies in the Kyoto Protocol to mitigate climate change. And most likely they will achieve it sooner rather than later.

The worst earthquake in recorded history triggered perhaps the worst tsunami ever heard of. We saw it. It was a horrifying nightmare that washed out entire villages. Despite early warnings, nearly 30,000 people perished catastrophically. The wave flooded the Fukushima nuclear facility, starting the worst nuclear disaster since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs 66 years ago.

Moreover, the Japanese nation seems to have rekindled the value of sustainable development, ethics and love. A high-ranked government official told me that one of the goods that has increased sales significantly since the earthquake is wedding rings. People are now reconsidering their individualistic lifestyle for a more meaningful standard of living by building a family.

A retired Japanese diplomat told me that the public is very angry about the nuclear disaster (it has not been controlled yet, let alone cleaned up). This nation has suddenly awakened to the reality that nuclear energy is neither clean nor renewable. It was simply inexpensive and seemingly endless. Generating abundant sources of renewable energy will be a priority in this country for the next 20 years.

Talk about a crisis transformed into an opportunity.

Work at GreenBiz.com?

I perceive high affinity between this job and my core competencies.

As a Costa Rican, I understand the value of living in peace with nature. This requires both ecological restoration and innovation on renewable energies. Most importantly, sustainability is a matter of ethics to do good while doing well.

I envision a future where different corporate sectors and world cultures contribute their best practices towards the global transformation of green business: United States’ remarkable entrepreneurial ability to leapfrog technology through innovation; China’s massive funding of renewables; Brazil’s environmental superpower status; Australia’s clean energy potential; Africa’s and Latin America’s potential for organic agriculture and eco-tourism; European Union’s virtuous legal implementation to tackle climate change through a culture change.

Moreover, I consider the coming decade as crucial to reach the necessary tipping point to guide humanity from a degrading lifestyle to a restorative one. Therefore, identifying the key stakeholders at a global level and the best scenarios to engage them in conversation and to broker deals with them will be elemental.

I pay close attention to Brazil as my wife is from there. Apart from the media coverage that the country’s development is having in recent years, it has started to become clear that it is, by far, the world’s environmental superpower and it is playing an aggressive role as world leader in the field. Its private sector is powerful in terms of finances and innovation, and also in social responsibility and environmental friendliness.

In the coming years, Brazil will host the two largest sports events in the world: the football (soccer) World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games in 2016. This represents a remarkable opportunity to showcase policies, products, partnerships, and lifestyles of a new, green cultural paradigm.

I am willing to relocate, to Oakland or Brazil or elsewhere, the same way I have lived in Costa Rica, Norway, China and Australia. I have been looking for the perfect job that will fulfill my three main interests: to be passionate about it, to contribute the most according to my competencies, and to be well remunerated for the effort. I feel I may have found it at GreenBiz.com.

My full-time academic program at Carnegie Mellon Australia will finish in early December. As of now, I have no scheduled commitments afterwards and am currently searching for a full-time job.