Greenwashing Debunkers Club

The Sustainable Development Report (1) published its 2020 report ranking the countries based on how close they are to achieve the 17 SDGs, available here . The index purpose is to track "country performance on the 17 SDGs, as agreed by the international community in 2015 with equal weight to all 17 goals" and its value "signifies a country’s position between the worst (0) and the best or target (100) outcomes" . The higher the country index, the closer it is to achieve the best SDG outcome. But how realistic this index reflects the real development of sustainable actions? In one of the most significant works in the last years, developed at Leeds University, "A Good Life For All Within Planetary Boundaries" (2) ( interactive site here ) mapped the sustainability performance of a series of countries was estimated using the doughnut economics model , which provides an indication, for each country, on how close it is to the ideal social and environmental e...

Julio F. Campos Linear, circular, regenerative, green economy ... Amid so many economic models proposing to help solve our socio-environmental problems, how can someone determine its real potential to truly transform the world we live in for a more sustainable future? If we take a look at the core theoretical concepts supporting them, it is possible to catch a glimpse about its potential of change. This infographic provides a summary of the two current mindsets of economic thinking and how those "new economy" models fit into them, allowing the reader to better understand the transformative potential of each proposed model.

Julio F. Campos This article provides a list of four of the most important books on sustainability that one need to read to both understand the causes of our problems and the ways to solve them The Coal Question; An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal Mines; William Stanley Jevons; 1865. Concerned with the fast rates in which the coal was being consumed due to high demand by industries, Jevons approached the issue analyzing how the technological development of equipment efficiency and its consequent reduction in coal use could prevent it exhaustion or scarcity. Over a century before the definition of the eco-efficiency term in 1992, in what become known as "The Jevons' Paradox", Jevons observed that the constant increase in efficiency could if fact leads to increase in recourses use, resulting in a fast decline of resource stocks. While still trying to be disproved by the efficiency advocates, the number of ...

Julio F. Campos The circular economy for some years has been emerging as an alternative proposal to the current production model being embraced by a growing number of governments and companies. Its concept is to introduce into the production system feedback mechanisms similar to those existing in natural systems, eliminating the linear explore-produce-discard characteristic in favor of a structure based on reuse and recycling cycles, thus reducing both the volume of discarded waste and the of exploited natural inputs. Basic model of the structure of the Circular Economy Encompassing different initiatives, such as cradle-to-cradle , biomimetics or industrial ecology , in this scenario the environment would cease to be a mere reservoir of resources/waste, but an adjunct to the economic process, providing proposals for the development of sustainable economic solutions. However, when we have in mind the finite characteristic of our planet resources, for the circular econ...

A necessidade de entender corretamente os problemas ambientais sempre foi posta como um dos pilares da economia ecológica em contraste à neoclássica. Recentemente foi realizado um evento na Unicamp sobre Fórum Capitalismo e Meio Ambiente, Crescimento Zero e Desenvolvimento Sustentável. no qual acadêmicos discutiram as inter-relações entre ambos e possíveis soluções para os problemas atuais. Lamentavelmente vemos em uma palestra o conhecido Prof. José Eli da Veiga ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06TGj0G-jto ) argumentando sobre dois pontos importantes que merecem uma análise mais próxima: Primeiro aponta que se ultrapassados supostos limites impostos pela natureza não teremos um colapso. A base de tal argumentação é a proposição de Rockström et al no artigo “A safe operating space for humanity” publicado na Nature em 2009 (em anexo) ( https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/461472a.html ) , no qual o mesmo e sua equipe sustentam a proposta de trabalhar com o termo “fron...