There is an increasing number of women who are in leadership roles in sustainability. As part of Women’s History Month, let’s take a look at 10 women who are making strides in sustainability and shaping ethical consumerism. Add women in sustainability that you admire to the list in the comments section.

by Aysu Katun, Green Economy Post

In their book “Women in Green,” authors Kira Gould and Lance Hosey argue that women are more likely than men to support environmental causes through voting, activism and consumer choices. Whether this argument is true or not, there is an increasing number of women who are in leadership roles in sustainability. As part of Women’s History Month, let’s take a look at ten women who are making strides in sustainability and shaping ethical consumerism.

Erin Carlson

As Director of Yahoo! for Good, the company’s Social Responsibility department, Carlson is responsible for leading Yahoo!’s environmental strategy and corporate social responsibility programs. Her primary focus is inspiring Yahoo!’s audience of over 500 million people to be more green in their daily lives through use of Yahoo! products. She helped guide the development of a new Yahoo! Green site to encourage people to take eco-friendly actions and has driven the creation of Yahoo! Earth Day sites since 2005. She also spearheaded Yahoo!’s worldwide initiative to become carbon neutral and rallied grassroots efforts by launching a Green Team of hundreds of employees across the globe.

Prior to joining Yahoo!, Carlson worked at Nike Inc. in Apparel Sustainability and at Business for Social Responsibility as Environment Program Manager.

Karen Flanders

Karen Flanders has 20 years of experience working on sustainability matters having worked domestically and internationally within corporations, NGOs as well as intergovernmental organizations. She is currently a Senior Associate at The Prince’s Rainforest Project responsbile for corporate outreach. Shea Senior Associate with the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership (CPSL). Through CPSL, she is a Senior Associate with The Prince’s Rainforest Project, where she is currently working to engage the support of corporate America to call for emergency action to help combat climate change by addressing rainforest destruction. She is also on the board of the Women’s Network for a Sustainable Future.

Prior to joining CPSL, she served as the director of sustainability for the Coca Cola Company for eight years. Flanders lived and worked in Europe for 12 years and led European and global advocacy campaigns for WWF – the conservation organization. Fluent in French and Dutch, her affinity for cross-cultural communications dates back to her tenure with a pan-European agency, where she advised corporations such as Mars, L’Oreal and others on European CSR policies.

Hannah Jones

Hannah Jones holds the position of Vice President of Sustainable Business and Innovation at Nike and manages the company’s global corporate responsibility efforts, including responsible competitiveness, community investments, social innovation and considered product innovation. She has been working with Nike since 1998 when bad publicity surrounding labour issues was at its height.
Before joining Nike, Jones served as a consultant to Microsoft and Kimberly-Clark on both companies’ community affairs programs. She also worked as the European manager of Community Service Volunteers Media, an UK-based non-governmental organization, where she led pan-European campaigns centering on youth issues.

Diane MacEachern

Diane MacEachern is a founding member of Green Moms Carnival, a blogging network of mostly moms who reach millions of consumers with their green lifestyle tips, product reviews and shopping suggestions. MacEachern is also the founder & CEO of Big Green Purse and publisher of the award-winning www.biggreenpurse.com; and she is the best-selling author of Big Green Purse: Use Your Spending Power to Create a Cleaner, Greener World and Save Our Planet: 750 Everyday Ways You Can Clean Up The Earth. MacEachern is also a regular commentator on Martha Stewart’s Whole Living radio program.

Christina Nicholson

In her current role as Director of Sustainable Development, Christina Nicholson is responsible for driving sustainability as a strategic agenda throughout both corporate and brand activities within Pottery Barn and Williams-Sonoma brands. She has also joined the Sustainable Furnishings Council (SFC) board of directors.

Her background in finance, sustainable design and marketing make her uniquely qualified for this cross sector challenge and she is making great headway on materials and supply chain, energy use and both internal and external brand communications and education. You can watch a video about some of the actions she is taking at William-Sonoma here.

Bonnie Nixon

Bonnie Nixon and her green team of dedicated sustainability experts are responsible for the short and long term vision, strategy, marketing, messaging and stakeholder relations program for Hewlett Packard.

Over the last decade at HP, Nixon has worked with top level management on environmental, health, safety and social polices and procedures and designed and implemented a world class ethical sourcing and supplier relationship management program.

Prior to joining HP, as an experienced environmental mediator, she has spent more than 24 years working with business, government and non-governmental entities on environmental and social impact assessments and programs.


Dianne Dillon-Ridgley

Environmentalist and Human Rights Activist, Dianne Dillon-Ridgley has worked for thirty years on issues of the environment and sustainability, and gender and CSR, both domestically and internationally. Since 1997 she has been a director at Interface, Inc., global manufacturer of modular carpet and a leader in sustainable design. She was a director at Green Mountain Energy for the first six years and still chairs the Environmental Integrity Committee for the company.

She was appointed by the White House to the US delegation for the Earth Summit in Rio, UNGASS-’97 & WSSD in South Africa, making her the only person to serve on all three US delegations. She was also appointed by former President Clinton to the PCSD, his council on Sustainable Development. In the recent US election she worked for 18 months on the Obama campaign from its earliest days in Iowa and was part of the
P-CAP: Presidential Climate Action Project.

Emma Stewart

Emma Stewart, Ph.D., is currently the Senior Program Lead of Autodesk’s Sustainability Initiative. In this role, she leads the design software company’s efforts to optimize its environmental footprint and model sustainability best practices to its 9 million architect, engineer, manufacturing, and construction customers.

Prior to that, she founded and directed the Environmental R&D Division at Business for Social Responsibility, where her team designed corporate initiatives to analyze and adapt to ‘horizon’ issues such as payments for ecosystem services, water footprinting, carbon offsets and trading, climate lobbying, and sustainable product design.

Elizabeth Sturcken

Elizabeth Sturcken is the Managing Director of the Corporate Partnerships program at Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) where she develops and implements joint projects with leading companies to create environmental change.

She is currently leading a team of people working with Wal-Mart to create broad environmental change in areas including climate change, China, seafood, and packaging.

In the past, Sturcken led a FedEx project to develop environmentally advanced heavy-duty delivery vehicles. She also led a project with UPS to create innovative changes in their express delivery packaging, resulting in environmental, business and customer benefits.

Kathrin Winkler

Kathrin Winkler is Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer at EMC Corporation, where she is charged with providing vision and leadership in the development and implementation of EMC’s strategy for environmental and social sustainability. In her previous role as Sr. Director for EMC’s hardware engineering group, Kathrin founded the company’s Engineering Green Team and its Design for Environment program, which are driving leadership designs in environmental stewardship and energy efficiency throughout EMC’s product portfolio.

Kathrin joined EMC in 2003 as Director, NAS Product Management. Her past positions included Principal Consultant/Analyst specializing in enterprise management systems and service level architectures at Renaissance Worldwide, Vice President Technical Marketing in a Web services security startup, and Consultant Software Engineer in Network Systems Engineering at Digital Equipment Corporation. In addition to her work at EMC, Kathrin serves as a Director of EcoLogic Development Fund, a non-profit organization dedicated to community-based conservation in Central America and she is on the board of The Green Grid, a consortium of IT companies and professionals seeking to improve energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems around the globe. She blogs her experiences working with sustainability issues at EMC, on her blog, Interconnected World.

Help us make this list more comprehensive. What women do you know who are making strides in sustainability?

Innovation projects bring food security in Himalayas

Himalayas, India: Growing enough food is not easy in Ladakh, a desert region high in the mountains of Jammu and Kashmir, India's most northern state. With farming possible only from April to August, this bare and cold Himalayan area struggles to feed its 300,000 people.

Farming is possible only from April to August/Photo credit: Flickr/ Alles-schlumpf

In the winter, temperatures drop to minus 45 degrees Celsius and most local residents, save the few who migrate to the lowlands, remain indoors, drinking copious cups of steaming, salty yak butter tea.
Until the 1960s, Ladakhis were self-sufficient, relying on a diet of barley, wheat and potatoes. But today there are more Indian army personnel deployed in the region, which lies on the India-China border. Ladakh's youth, meanwhile, are increasingly switching from backbreaking agriculture in the harsh terrain to more profitable jobs in the booming tourism industry.
Now almost three-quarters of the population depend on government-subsidised food for survival, as Ladakh's food production falls far short of local demand.
Projects now underway in Ladakh could reverse this negative trend. Spearheading the effort for sustainable food production are an unlikely mix of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), India's Defence Institute of High Altitude Research (DIHAR), and the local administration, the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC).

 

 

Artificial glaciers collect and store glacial melt on the sides of hills that are shadowed from the sun/ Photo credit: Wikicommons

But although their approaches differ, they illustrate how simple agricultural innovations may help overcome the gap between demand and supply in an inhospitable terrain.
Artificial glaciers provide water…
The most popular of the innovations is the 'artificial glacier' designed by civil engineer Chewang Norphel for the Leh Nutrition Project, which was set up in 1978, initially with the aim of providing water to farmers during the sowing season in April.
Irrigation in Ladakh depends on snow and glacial melt from the Himalayas, but the peak times for water availability do not coincide with farmers' needs. Norphel created an ingenious embankment system that collects and stores glacial melt on the sides of hills that are shadowed from the sun.
By the time the ice starts to melt in April, when it is planting time, the water is released to villages through a network of canals. Artificial glaciers collect and store glacial melt on the sides of hills that are shadowed from the sun.
As Norphel added: “Availability of irrigation water in early spring enables farmers to harvest two crops in a year, which was not possible earlier.” Today, nine artificial glaciers are in place, with four more scheduled for mid-2011.
But water and food security concerns are further complicated by the impact of climate change on glaciers. “80% of the farmers in Ladakh depend on snow and glacier melt water for irrigation,” said Norphel. “The glaciers are receding rapidly and winters are getting shorter and warmer. Whatever little snowfall there is melts away quickly.”
…with simple machines in play
For most of the NGOs active in the region, the key to self-sufficiency lies in keeping traditional knowledge alive and maintaining established structures of cooperative farming among widely scattered settlements. But they are also providing simple technologies such as mechanised threshers and hydraulic pumps.

Local farmers do not receive any money from the sale of products such as seabuckthorn berries/ Photo credit: Flickr/ konstantin timo

The Ladakh Development Foundation, for example, focuses on providing mechanised, diesel-powered threshers to families that have traditionally used animals for the job, cutting the average post-harvest threshing time from 14 days to two.
Similarly, another NGO, the Ladakh Ecological Development Group, has installed 62 hydraulic ram pumps to lift water to higher slopes in the parched terrain.
In addition to technology, organisations such as the Women's Alliance of Ladakh conduct information and training sessions and foster networks among communities, encouraging organic, cooperative farming methods.
High-end research
Meanwhile, the Defence Institute of High Altitude Research (DIHAR), as its name suggests, is engaged in more sophisticated and costly research and development at its labs housed in a sprawling complex near Leh, the region's largest town.
DIHAR is researching a range of agriculture and animal husbandry technologies, including studying the genetic diversity of fruits and vegetables, changing breeding practices for sheep and goats and applying the abundant medicinal plants of the Himalayas for commercial use.
One simple but valuable output from DIHAR is a technique to store vegetables underground during the winter, giving them a much longer 'shelf life'.
DIHAR is researching a range of agriculture and animal husbandry technologies, including changing breeding practices for sheep.
Army comes first
DIHAR engages with local communities to some extent-holding training sessions, running festivals to provide information and working with LAHDC in some areas.
But its first priority is to feed the army-although there can also be considerable benefits for local people. For instance, greenhouse technologies have been given to local people so they can provide army personnel with fresh vegetables.
As DIHAR scientist, Om Prakash Chaurasia, says: “We have been able to supply 50% of soldiers' vegetables by working with local cooperatives and farmers.”
The benefits to Ladakh's farmers are not DIHAR's chief concern, but local communities now have improvements to traditional makeshift greenhouses that grow fresh vegetables during the winter.
DIHAR's greenhouses have three side walls built with mud bricks, a roof made of native willow and poplar logs, and the front covered by ultraviolet stabilised films that absorb large amounts of sunlight. During the night, thick straw mats are placed over the structure to retain heat.
But other DIHAR technologies have brought limited benefits to local communities. Take commercial packaging of products such as juices and jams from the seabuckthorn berry that grows widely in Ladakh. Today, a variety of seabuckthorn products are found in Indian cities. But local communities are involved only in the initial labour-intensive and least-profitable packaging operations.
And local farmers do not receive any money from the sale of the products, although Chaurasia points out that DIHAR generates local employment and “local cooperatives set the price which farmers are to receive per kilogram of seabuckthorn pulp.”
Ladakh Council shows leadership
Besides DIHAR and the NGOs, leadership and commitment from Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC) is essential to promoting self-sufficiency, and the organisation is also helping to roll out low-cost technologies to extend the growing season and increase yields.
For example, it is now giving a 50% subsidy to help farmers cover the $US2,000 cost of building community greenhouses that can grow plants all year. There are now 20 such greenhouses in Ladakh, with 20 more planned for this year.
LAHDC's agriculture and animal husbandry departments have extensive programmes to distribute high-yield seedlings and assist in the selective mating of cattle to improve breeds.
And LAHDC has also designated 8,000 hectares of land in Igophey-an uncultivated expanse on the banks of the Indus river, near Leh-for agricultural use.
An irrigation canal with a web of sub-channels is in place to supply water to the fields and the plan today is to provide plots of about half-a-hectare to families to farm, although bureaucratic obstacles still need to be overcome.
It is unclear whether such land division will result in sufficient yields. As Tsering Phuntsog, a district sheep husbandry officer at LAHDC, points out: “It is very labour-intensive work and finding labour is a big problem in Leh.”
Instead, leasing the area to local entrepreneurs to set up mechanised, commercial-scale operations may make the biggest dent in reducing Ladakh's massive food dependency.
“Mechanised agriculture must come with other improvements, such as a better public transport and distribution system,” added Phuntsog.
Today, a number of pressures are weighing heavily on Ladakh's fragile agricultural landscape, including increasingly less glacial and snow melt, a growing lack of interest in farming among young people and the continuing loss of arable land to tourism.
Reversing the trends will be difficult. But hope lies in the determination of some individuals and organisations to provide more sustainable and innovative agrarian approaches.

Aligning with China only undermines New Delhi's negotiating position and costs its people dearly.

BRAHMA CHELLANEY

China has been publicly excoriated by U.S. officials and others for opposing a binding climate-change deal at this month's United Nations summit in Copenhagen. But the real loser was India.

By aligning itself with China's negotiating position, India bracketed itself with the world's largest polluting nation. This tack has been months in the works; back in October, New Delhi signed a five-year memo of understanding with Beijing and agreed, among other things, to present a united front in Copenhagen. Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh went so far as to declare there "is no difference" between the two countries' negotiating positions.

Yet there is a huge difference in actual emissions. China is the world's largest polluter, responsible for 24% of global carbon emissions. Most of these emissions are due to China's economic development path, which has relied heavily on carbon-intensive, manufacturing industries. China's per-capita carbon emissions are four times higher than India's, which boasts the lowest per-capita emissions among all-important developing countries, at 26% of the world's average.

China also doesn't share India's basic approach to curbing global warming. New Delhi wants per-capita emission levels and historic contributions to the build-up of greenhouse gases to form the objective criteria for any global carbon mitigation plan. China, as the world's factory, wants a different formula that discounts carbon intensity linked to export industries.

Nor does India have much in common with other major developing nations, either in its carbon profile or industrial-development levels. For example, in 2007 (the latest figures available) India's per-capita emissions totalled 1.2 tons; South Africa, 9.4; China, 4.8; and Brazil, 2.1, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

These facts argue for India to align itself with the least developed nations, which have lower emissions profiles. Yet the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh entered the Copenhagen negotiations joined at the hip with China, first by agreeing to put up a united front and then by following in Beijing's footsteps to unveil a voluntary plan to slash its carbon intensity by 2020.

The move forced the U.S. to strike a watered-down deal with the developing-world bloc of Brazil, India, South Africa and China—rather than deal directly with the world's largest polluter, China. The deal also committed India to "implement mitigation actions" open to "international consultations and analysis." Rather than focus on providing basic services—like electricity and safe drinking water—to the hundreds of millions of poor Indians who desperately need them, Mr. Singh also pledged to slash India's emissions intensity by 20% "regardless of the outcome" in Copenhagen.

Past experience should have taught India that whenever it has joined hands with China on environmental issues, it has been let down by Beijing's proclivity to jettison principles in the ruthless pursuit of self-interest. Take the 1989 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer: China teamed up with India in the negotiations, only to reverse its stance and agree to abide by the protocol if it were compensated for the compliance costs. India was forced to follow suit.
In Copenhagen, India would have done better to delink itself from China and the other two leading developing nations and to encourage the world's largest polluters—the U.S. and China—to do a deal.

India not only aligned itself with the wrong group, but also it presented itself inadvertently as a major global polluter by making common cause with China, whose developmental path threatens to unleash a carbon tsunami on the world. After all, had the situation in Copenhagen been reversed—with India's per-capita emissions four times higher than China's, and with India in the line of international fire—would Beijing have helped provide New Delhi diplomatic cover?

Mr. Chellaney, professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, is the author of "On the Frontline of Climate Change: International Security Implications" (Konrad Adenauer Foundation, 2007).

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