The Association for Sustainability in Business

The Association for Sustainability in Business has a new home:  www.sustainability.asn.au

The Association for Sustainability in Business provides a platform for industry and academic leaders to share sustainability knowledge, the Association is committed to supporting the sustainable business practices of their members.

Keep in touch and informed

environ sustain imageOur Purpose

The purpose of the Association for Sustainability in Business is to:

  • Promote continuing professional development for sustainability through conferences and seminars
  • Encourage collaboration and information sharing through industry networking events 
  • Share best practice and knowledge in sustainability

The recent activity of the Association for Sustainability in Business has been focused on developing high quality annual industry events on Sustainability, Healthy Cities and Regional Development. The Association hosts webinars on topical issues in sustainability.

With a growing membership, the Association plans to expand our membership offerings in 2015 based on your feedback.  

Sustainability Webinars – join our webinar series

The Association for Sustainability in Business provides a platform for industry and academic leaders to share sustainability knowledge, the Association is committed to supporting the sustainable business practices of their members. The Association is creating a community for industry to work together on challenging sustainability issues.

The purpose of the  Association for Sustainability in Business is to:

  • Promote continuing professional development for sustainability through conferences and seminars
  • Encourage collaboration and information sharing through industry networking events 
  • Share best practice and knowledge in sustainability

The Association for Sustainability in Business will be hosting topical Sustainability Webinars.

Sustainability Webinars

Do time or distance make it difficult for you to attend one of our events in person? You can enjoy the same high quality presentations via our live web seminars, from anywhere in Australia. All you need is an internet connection.

  • Hear and watch a seminar live on your PC, laptop or mobile device.
  • Watch live – from the comfort of your office, or elsewhere.
  • Gain a deep understanding of the latest sustainability issues and updates in your area
  • Ask our expert presenters questions and download powerpoint presentations.

“It really is a godsend to those of us working in regional areas”

3 easy steps to attending a live webinar

Step 1: Register for a seminar
on our website or from an email sent to you

Step 2: Test to see if your computer is compatible

Step 3: Attend Webinar

It’s as simple as that!

Webinars Schedule for 2014
Please visit the Association website to see the list of upcoming webinars.

sustainability

New ASX guidelines to force sustainability reporting

By Kylar Loussikian, The Conversation

Publicly listed companies will need to disclose exposure to economic, environmental and social sustainability risks for the first time under new corporate governance guidelines released today.

The principles, issued by the ASX Corporate Governance Council, are the first since the global financial crisis. Companies have previously not been required to disclose non-financial risk.

Sara Bice, a research fellow at the Melbourne School of Government, said the changes were a “big move”, particularly in the absence of government regulation. She said the changes fits with the new guidelines’ increased focus on transparency and disclosure.

“These are risks that many companies identify through regular auditing processes, but previously they may have taken them into account for decision making but not publicly discussed or disclosed them.”

“The majority of ASX companies already produce sustainability reports, and if you look across the globe, 95% of the top 250 listed firms produce them too,” she said.

However Thomas Clarke, director of the Centre for Corporate Governance at UTS, said that while some very large Australian corporations had world-class reporting in these fields, “the majority of listed Australian corporations are lagging behind international best practice”.

He said successive federal governments had declined to regulate mandatory social and environmental risk reporting, even after it was recommended by a parliamentary inquiry and the Corporations and Market Advisory Committee.

“In the past social and environmental risks were dismissed by companies as externalities,” Professor Clarke said.

“What this meant simply is that while corporations were free to pursue profit, it was the wider community that picked up the bill for any social or environmental harm they caused.”

Companies listed on the ASX are required to comply with the principles or must give detailed reasons for their non-compliance. A failure to do so could ultimately lead to a company being delisted.

Originally developed in the wake of a series of corporate collapses in 2001, the guidelines were first released in 2003.

Citing “increasing calls globally for the business community to address matters of economic, environmental and social sustainability”, the guidelines require a listed firm to outline how it intends to manage those risks.

Other changes, which come after an extended consultation period, include a relaxation on requirements for independent directors.

Suzanne Le Mire, a corporate law academic at the University of Adelaide, said it’s possible that older standards requiring majority independent board members could have forced companies to accept directors with less expertise.

“These new changes have responded to those concerns by increasing the emphasis on obtaining expertise when directors are appointed to the board, and disclosing the presence or absence of expertise,” she said.

“One of the most controversial proposed changes was the refinement of the definition of independence to provide that directors who had been on board for more than nine years lacked independence.”

Dr Le Mire said it was “disappointing” this requirement had been removed. The new guidelines simply require the length of a director’s tenure “be considered”.

But she said an emphasis on diversity demonstrated a view that a “commitment to equity and diversity will enhance financial performance and board deliberations”.

“It’s interesting to see the conception of diversity has been shifted from an exclusive emphasis on gender diversity to a broader notion including age, disability, ethnicity, marital or family status, religious or cultural background, sexual orientation and gender identity.”

The new rules come into effect in July.

The ConversationThis article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.

Webinar – Sustainability Reporting…Coming Soon

The Association for Sustainability in Business will be scheduling a Sustainability Reporting Webinar shortly, the webinar will be free to our members. To  find out more about the Association for Sustainability in Business please visit the website www.sustainability.asn.au or click on this link to join the Association.

We need a smarter debate on developing northern Australia

By Andrew Campbell, Charles Darwin University and Jim Turnour, James Cook University

Northern futures, northern voices: It seems everyone has ideas about how Australia’s north could be better, but most of those ideas come from the south. In this six-part weekly series, developed by the Northern Research Futures Collaborative Research Network and The Conversation, northern researchers lay out their own plans for a feasible, sustainable future.

The Coalition’s 2030 Vision for Developing Northern Australia invokes romantic notions of Australia’s pioneering past, describing the north as no longer the “last frontier” but the “next frontier”.

Calls for a northern food bowl to double Australia’s food production appear to resonate with both major parties. And both seem sympathetic to new irrigation schemes fed from dams and groundwater pumping.

Labor is already investing in a A$10M North Queensland Irrigated Agriculture Strategy in the Flinders and Gilbert River catchments of the Gulf of Carpentaria. The Queensland Department of Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry wants to support investment and overcome technical barriers to production.

AACo (Australia’s largest agriculture company) has a licence in the Flinders River but claims that it won’t be planting on its properties until further water is released. Cotton Australia sees room for industry expansion on the Flinders, assuming improved transport infrastructure and eventually a cotton gin. Integrated Food Energy Development has options over land to grow 50,000 hectares of sugar cane in the existing Gilbert River Farming District.

The Queensland Government announced in July 2012 a release of 80,000 and 15,000 megalitres of water reserved for new irrigation developments in the Flinders and Gilbert Catchments respectively. In May 2013 the Minister for Natural Resources and Mines announced the successful tenderers, and indicated that no further water releases will be undertaken until a CSIRO assessment is completed this December.

Irrigation promises a lot, but is yet to deliver in the north

These developments could be seen as a resurfacing of the “northern myth” — a term coined by agricultural economist Bruce Davidson in his seminal (and much ignored) 1965 book “The Northern Myth: a study of the physical and economic limits to agricultural and pastoral development in tropical Australia.”

Tom Rayner

Davidson was writing about the Ord Irrigation Scheme, the biggest irrigation project in northern Australia. His scepticism was well founded.

Fifty years on, after more than a billion taxpayer dollars and enormous volumes of subsidised water, more than 60 crops have been tried, but large-scale profitable sustainable irrigation industries have failed to persist in the Ord. Sandalwood may in time prove to be a winner, but you can’t eat it. Neither WA nor the Commonwealth appears to want a rigorous, independent benefit-cost analysis of the scheme.

The Northern Australia Land and Water Task Force delivered its final report in 2009. It was the latest of many studies since 1912 to document the formidable climatic, physical and economic constraints in northern Australia to conventional irrigated agriculture, concerns echoed more recently in The Conversation here and here.

The CSIRO Northern Australian Irrigation Futures project concluded that a patchwork mosaic of smaller-scale irrigation based on groundwater, in areas with better soils and transport options, possibly integrated with the pastoral industry for fattening cattle and other livestock, would be a brighter prospect than large dams.

Australia has been running down its irrigation research effort, and will need a substantial re-investment in irrigation science, tailored to tropical conditions, if we are to avoid more expensive mistakes at the expense of taxpayers and the environment.

The environmental, social and cultural impacts of a network of dams and irrigation schemes across one of the world’s largest regions of free-flowing rivers would be significant. Managing these impacts would be difficult in a region where Indigenous interests are deep and enduring. Recent research by JCU and CDU colleagues suggests that existing models of irrigated agriculture are likely to deliver net disbenefits for Indigenous communities.

Studies in the Mitchell River catchment revealed “a profound and asymmetric disconnect” between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous economies – meaning that increasing the incomes of Indigenous people raises the incomes of non-Indigenous people, but not vice-versa. Hopes for “trickle down” benefits from agricultural development to Indigenous communities are likely to be misplaced.

Northern development is about much more than dams

However the Coalition’s 2030 Vision for Developing Northern Australia cannot be dismissed as just a yearning for big irrigation schemes. Looking past the media grabs and the political talking points, there are other worthy elements to this proposal.

Firstly, the idea of a White Paper on northern development should be welcomed, especially if the process provides genuine opportunities for dialogue and input from the people of the north, as suggested previously in this series by Allan Dale.

It’s also sensible to explore opportunities in defence, tourism, infrastructure, energy, education and services, and to invest in a sustained way in the relationships with our neighbours that will be critical if Australia is to prosper in the Asian Century.

Obviously as researchers based in the north, we think the Coalition’s plan for a Cooperative Research Centre has merit in principle. But flagging such an initiative at this stage appears to pre-empt the normally rigorous and highly competitive CRC selection process.

Tom Rayner

Such a CRC would need to focus on building science and planning capacity in the north — especially the collaborations and capabilities necessary to look in an integrated way at these big development questions.

For example, the natural and cultural values of the north are central to its enduring attraction for tourists, but those values would potentially be threatened by ill-conceived or poorly implemented development. Yes, we need much better infrastructure, but we also need to ensure that we retain significant areas with traditional “outback” qualities.

Measures that change river flows (such as dams or bores) will affect freshwater and marine fishing, both recreational and commercial. Movements of skilled labour to particular industry sectors can undermine other sectors, and so on.

There seems to be a nagging fear in southern Australia that if we don’t do more with the north, someone else will. Here in the Top End, we see ourselves as southerners in Asia — looking north to opportunity — as well as northerners in Australia, looking south for examples of what not to do in over-allocating water resources and expanding irrigation on unsuitable lands.

We should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Northern Australia is a very special part of the world, with amazing heritage and values. Yes, there is enormous scope for development, but irrigated agriculture is likely to be at best a modest contributor. Bruce Davidson has yet to be rebutted convincingly.

If development is grounded in careful and respectful consultation and engagement with the people of the north, informed by good science done in the north, focused on natural competitive advantage, and subject to rigorous benefit-cost analysis, then we may yet transcend the northern myth.

Part one: Northern Australia should have a say in its own future.

The Conversation

Andrew Campbell is the Director of CDU’s Research Institute for the Environment and Livelihoods which is funded from a range of government and industry sources including Cooperative Research Centres, and would potentially benefit from any increase in science investment in northern Australia.

Jim Turnour is a researcher within The Cairns Institute, James Cook University leading a project funded by the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation. He is undertaking post graduate studies through James Cook University within the Collaborative Research Network. He was the Member for Leichhardt in the Australian Parliament between 2007 and 2010.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.

Interested in Liveable Cities?

Join the Association to receive updates

The Association for Sustainability in Business Inc. is a non government, not-for-profit organisation (IA 38885). The Association provides a forum for our member communities, to examine and discuss challenges to improving our sustainability and understanding the key factors that determine sustainable outcomes.

The Association offers members access to practical solutions and strategies that will assist the development of sustainable practice.

Membership of The Association does not attract fees or charges and presently consists of the following communities;

  •     Liveable Cities – Built Environment – Healthy Cities
  •     Waste Management – Recycling
  •     Natural Resources – Renewable Energy
  •     Population Growth – Food Production
  •     Regional Development

The Association for Sustainability in Business will be hosting the 7th Making Cities Liveable Conference on the 9th – 11th July 2014 at Kingscliff.

The Conference will examine the challenges, opportunities, trends and issues currently facing sector professionals. Delegates and presenters will examine how to plan for Healthy Cities, Sustainable Cities and Resilient Cities. The conference will be a platform for government, academic  and private sector practitioners.  It will consider the “liveability” of our cities and towns in the future and the changes required to public policy to build the communities of tomorrow.

We regularly post articles on liveable cities, follow up on twitter to find out more join our association on http://www.sustainability.asn.au

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