Complying with quality standards is no easy task, even with enough resources available to manage them. Unfortunately, today’s difficult business climate has not changed the tough quality standard requirements. These requirements take a significant amount of time and resources to manage. The good news is that successfully managing an organization’s quality management system with ...
In this globalised (and, in a sense, harmonised) world, a country and even an entity is not so free to play a game without complying with international and national rules of game. As usual, there exists dilemma on these rules of game in the real world. Even though international rules and national rules are closely interacting each other, in principle, international rules only provides commonly ...
New report claims that only 19% of the world’s top companies have achieved significant reductions in their carbon emissions. New research reveals that over 80% of the world's top companies aren't achieving significant carbon emissions reductions, although there is an increase in the amount of companies that identify significant opportunities instead of risks from climate change. According ...
Statistical downscaling model was used to generate 30-year climate trend of Kedah – the state which has the largest cultivation area in Malaysia, resulting from climate changes. To obtain a better predictors set, multicorrelation matrix analysis was added in the climate model as a screening tool to explain the multiple correlation relationship among 26 predictors and 20 predictands. The ...
April 22nd is Earth Day. It will be the 46th event of its kind, bringing together people from all over the world to participate in the movement and “inspire, challenge ideas, ignite passion and motivate people to action”. What started in 1970 as a movement for environmental protection, bringing together 20 million Americans, has turned into a globally spanning initiative which now ...
This report assesses the risks posed by climate change to International Finance Corporation's(IFC's) investment in packages' new Bulleh Shah Paper Mills (BSPM) at Kasur, Pakistan, and identifies potential adaptation (risk management) measures that can be used to 'climate-proof' the investment. A number of conclusions can now be drawn regarding climate risks at BSPM. Packages Limited is Pakistan's ...
As the world contemplates a post-Kyoto Protocol climate change policy architecture, some key observations of the clean development mechanism (CDM) remind us that climate change policies should be linked more closely to the promotion of sustainability. A sustainability-rated CDM (SR-CDM) is proposed in this paper; it applies the gold standard as a way of assessing the sustainability value of ...
Building measures in sewer systems are increasingly driven by rehabilitation/retrofitting and adaptation needs. Aging infrastructure together with changing boundary conditions (due to climate change, land-use change, demographic change) and also changing design standards and legislation require a prospective design to preserve the functionality of urban drainage systems not only today, but also ...
In the State of the Union address last night, President Obama called to make this “a year of action.” Addressing climate change will require his administration to make that call a reality. The President noted that “the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact.” With that in mind, this year will be key for turning climate commitments into tangible action. The most ...
Correcting the World’s Greatest Market Failure: Climate Change at the Multilateral Development Banks is a new analysis by the World Resources Institute that examines the challenges of mainstreaming climate change at the Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs). In the lead up to the 2005 G8 Gleneagles Summit, WRI analysis found that climate change had been considered in less than 20 percent of the ...
Imagine you inherit a one-of-a-kind china vase from your great-grandmother. It’s a priceless family treasure, and there’s none other like it in the world. You take your responsibility for this heirloom very seriously by building a protective display case for it in your home. You also install burglar and fire alarms, and take out an expensive insurance policy that will pay you $10 ...
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) finally put years of public outcry and speculation to rest with the release of an interpretive guidance document explaining how publicly traded companies are expected to assess and disclose business risks associated with climate change. The Commission voted 3-2 in favor of the guidance document that formally explains when, and to what extent, ...
Weeks before the athletes took to the ice and snow at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, Dr. Duncan Axisa was in the mountains around PyeongChang, studying ice-forming particles. Later in the year, Axisa traveled to India to study monsoon clouds, and to France to participate in a trans-national ice-nucleation experiment. Axisa and his team travel around the globe to help scientists better ...
As part of his recently released Climate Action Plan, President Obama directed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to set carbon pollution standards for existing power plants. While these federal standards are a critical component of the U.S. plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and curb climate change, the responsibility to actually implement them will fall to individual states. The ...
As the impacts of climate change become ever-clearer, so does the challenge of adaptation. While the World Bank estimates that developing countries will need $70-$100 billion annually through 2050 to adapt to climate change, the public sector alone cannot meet this financial goal. Rather, the world needs the human, technical, and financial resources of the private sector to help bridge this ...
At the COP 21 climate convention in Paris at the end of 2015, leaders from 194 nations agreed to pursue actions that will cut greenhouse gas emissions enough to keep global warming within 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) above pre-industrial conditions. Meeting this goal will avoid continued and increasing harm to people and ecosystems around the world caused by a changing climate, and it is also a great ...