PoliticsGlobal: UN Human Rights Council: Ratifies the 'Protect, Respect and Remedy' framework for 'Business and Human Rights'

 Today the United Nations Human Rights Council endorsed the "Guiding Principles for the Implementation of the UN Protect, Respect and Remedy Framework", 

drafted by UN Special Representative on business & human rights John Ruggie.  

The press release regarding the action by the Council is available here:

http://www.business-humanrights.org/Links/Repository/1006797

The text of the Principles is available here.

We will add the full text of the resolution alongside the item linked to above, as soon as we receive it – we will also include the resolution in our Weekly Update, says the burgeoning Business&Human Rights bureaucracy brand-new this last year or so.

EconomicsGlobal: Business: Innovation and creativity in the enterprise

Innovation and Creativity

• Why CEOs secretly hate innovation
  Though they'd never admit it, the idea of innovation makes many senior leaders queasy, writes Jeffrey Phillips. Bosses like to be in control, but innovation is inherently about breaking rules and shaking up the status quo. "The more innovation that happens in an organization, the less control the CEO has ... therefore innovation is tightly controlled if allowed at all," Phillips writes. Innovate on Purpose (1/4) 

• 5 ways to ensure continuous innovation
  Most companies aren't wired for ongoing innovation, and that needs to change, writes Holly G. Green. To make that happen, bosses must articulate clear goals, create a culture of communication, and support and reward bright ideas. "For companies looking to get ahead, innovation is no longer a 'nice to have.' It needs to become a way of life!" Green writes. More Than a Minute (1/4) 

The Global Perspective

• Indian firms try new inclusive-growth strategies
  Many Indian companies are easing up on CSR and philanthropy efforts and adopting inclusive business models designed to make money while also making life better for those at the bottom of the pyramid. DuPont India sent its entire upper management to an immersion program in rural areas to generate ideas for commercially viable products serving the needs of poor consumers. PepsiCo India is developing eco-friendly farming techniques to help farmers in water-scarce regions. Harvard Business Review online (1/5) 

plus --

Add this url to your shortlist of development orgs/cawzes to support:

http://www.martrural.com/mart_brief_history.htm


MART

-- EconoMix

New Zealamd Industry: Mining disaster: 2nd blasted blast seals fate of 29 miners

Associated Press via Yahoo! News by Joe Morgan and Ray Lilley (Nov24,2kt0):

 GREYMOUTH, New Zealand – Rescue teams were in full gear and ready to begin searching for 29 missing miners when toxic gas levels suddenly increased touching off an explosion that dashed all hopes of a rescue, a lost miner's brother and police said Thursday.

Prime Minister John Key declared the disaster a national tragedy, and across New Zealand on Thursday flags flew at half staff and many churches held services for people wanting to show respect for the miners.

Wednesday's massive explosion deep inside the mine on New Zealand's South Island came five days after the men were caught underground by a similar blast and only hours after rescuers reported their first progress in the rescue attempt.

A drilling team broke a narrow shaft through to the mine section believed to be holding the missing workers and two robots had crawled their way into the tunnel, providing the first view from inside the mine.

"She was all go," said Geoff Valli whose brother Keith, 62, perished in the mine. "There was going to be more than one or two (rescuers involved)" in the rescue bid.

"They explained just how close they were to going in. It was bloody scary. It could have been so much worse," he told National Radio.

After such close calls with large groups of miners working underground -- thinking of West Virginia, of Chile, of China, and now these deaths in New Zealand, a certain picture forms of an extremely dangerous industry worldw+d.  We thank God in the Mercy (as Charles Williams used to put it) sent the survivors worldw+de; but we turn quissical eyes to this counter-pattern -- too much endangerment of labourers!  What shoud be our global orientation in regard to such a condition of work in this heavy, dirty labour called "mining"?


-- EconoMix

EconomyUSA: Energy: Massive solar in desert opposed by ultra-Enviros

Woudn't you know, but a 3,600-acre desert wilderness of Federal land in northern California is about to be "planted" with 346 thousands of billboard-size solar panels, and it's being viewed by alarmed species-chauvinists who are bitterly opposed to destruction of the habitat of a "rare turtle" ("desert tortoise," no Latin species name is given) in the Ivanpah Valley.  No more soup for the Piutes of the neiborhood, but they're long gone anyway.

The other rascal of the piece is Bright-Source Energy, Inc, out of Oakland, regarded by other Enviros as equivalent to the "robber barons" of Nineteenth Century industrializing eastern states of the USA.  So we're told by Tiffany Hsu, reporting in Los Angeles T+mes (Oct23,2k100:

[It's] just another "Big Solar" corporation chasing down profits on the public dime.

"It's the old centralized robber-baron monopoly model," said Sheila Bowers, an activist with the advocacy group Solar Done Right. "This is the worst way to go about getting clean energy — it's slow, it's remote, it's devastating to the environment, and taxpayers are footing most of the bill."

Construction of the facility, perched on the eastern edge of San Bernardino County, is expected to be completed in 2013.Chevron Corp., BP, Morgan Stanley and Google Inc. are all among the investors.  The billion 37 million Fed loan guarantee is justified by the project's advocates becawz "without the government support, the solar thermal industry might struggle against cheaper technologies such as photovoltaics."

-- EconoMix