NASA, USAID, Department of State, and NIKE joined together to form LAUNCH in an effort to identify, showcase and support innovative approaches to global challenges through a series of forums. LAUNCH searches for visionaries, whose world-class ideas, technologies or programs show great promise for making tangible impacts on society.

On March 1, 2012, IEE Executive Director Edward Church was invited to participate in the LAUNCH Big Think on processes, projects and products to help us move Beyond Waste.  Some of Ed’s comments were posted by LAUNCH on their website.

The goal of the LAUNCH: Beyond Waste Challenge is to identify ten “game changing” innovations that have the potential to transform the current waste management systems and practices to ones focused on minimizing waste and/or transforming waste into new products.

Innovations will be presented July 20-22 at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Reviewers evaluated applicants on their potential for success in an environmental graduate study program. The program engages the nation’s best scientists and engineers in targeted research that complements EPA’s own outstanding intramural research program.

One of NCER’s highest priorities is ensuring that the nation has a well-trained scientific workforce that can address tomorrow’s complex environmental issues.

STAR Fellowships have focused on such topics as air toxics, drinking water, water quality, global change, ecosystem assessment and restoration, pollution prevention and new technologies, economics and decision sciences, computational toxicology, nanotechnology, and biomarkers.

Ed was one of the few consultants from the Western U.S. and was pleased to be able to bring the Institute’s participation to the EPA process.

UNEP Regional Director Amy Fraenkel

On November 15, 2011, Amy Fraenkel, the Director and Regional Representative of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), presented at a meeting organized by the Institute for Environmental Entrepreneurship and co-hosted by IEE partner Arup at their San Francisco office.  Ms. Fraenkel was there to engage with, and give information to, Bay Area businesses about the upcoming Rio+20 event.

Next year marks the 20^th anniversary of the historic 1992 Earth Summit. In light of this historic event, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (also known as Rio+20) will take place in Rio de Janeiro next June. The Conference seeks to: 1) re-invigorate political support for sustainable development, 2) look back and assess the progress to date, and 3) tackle emerging issues that have reached their “tipping points” such as food security and water. The Conference is also particularly focused on the creation of a Green Economy.

Ed Church, Executive Director of IEE, and Aidan Hughes, a Principal at Arup, convened the meeting, attended by representatives from PG&E, financial services, the Sustainable Business Alliance, Sustainable Industries magazine, and others. Ms. Fraenkel was especially interested in connecting with Bay Area businesses since much innovative thinking begins in the Bay Area, and thus it is critical to include the West Coast in the discussion.

Overall, the meeting brought together a range of people engaged in sustainable business and built a potentially long-lasting connection between UNEP and Bay Area green business experts.

It was one outcome of the process begun last November when Ed chaired and IEE staffed a Working Group to give input to the Conference.

IEE Executive Director Edward Church was a panelist at the 9^th annual Architecture and the City Festival, the nation’s largest architectural festival. This year’s theme is “Architecture of Consequence,” which hopes to demonstrate how progressive design and creative problem solving can address society’s current challenges and lead to a more sustainable future.

Dr. Church spoke on a panel about “Communities of the Future.” Seventy people attended the panel, which examined how increased demands for water, food, energy and recreational space are shaping contemporary architecture.

Social Capital Europe recently wrapped up in Amsterdam this past month on May 30th, 31st, and June 1st. Session Summaries from selected sessions of the conference are now available on our Conference Session Summaries page. Many thanks to the SOCAP scholars for their contribution to this knowledge base.

Funding Your Social Enterprise Session, SOCAP Europe 2011 Photo courtesy of Alina Garleanu

SOCAP/Europe is a conference where money meets meaning; where investors gather to collaborate and learn from others who are finding a way to invest their money for financial return as well as for the benefit of people and the planet; where entrepreneurs come to find out who has made a break through and who their next partner or next investor could be. This was the fourth Social Capital Markets conference held in Europe in order to highlight long-time players in this space.

IEE was invited for the second year, with representatives from corporations, government agencies and other nonprofits, to meet with Ph.D. students at Pauley Ballroom on the UC Berkeley campus. Executive Director Ed Church represented IEE and commented, “These students are among the best and brightest in pursuing ways to increase human potential in environmentally friendly ways. We depend on them and wish them well!”

More information on the ESPM program is available on their website at http://espm.berkeley.edu/

Executive Director Ed Church offered some of the answers on a panel with RSF Social Finance President Don Shaffer and New Resource Bank VP Bill Peterson, January 23, 2011 at the David Brower Center. They spoke at the Progressive Opportunities Career Fair, organized by the East Bay Express newspaper. The panel spoke to a standing-room-only crowd at an event attended by hundreds of people.

Both RSF and New Resource provide loans to businesses whose products and services help to achieve environmental and social, as well as financial returns.  Ed spoke of the newly emerging field of “impact investing,” which can generate these triple bottom line results. Impact investing goes beyond the relatively well known approach called socially responsible investing. SRI uses investment screens to avoid companies that produce things the investor regards as harmful, but impact investing seeks to invest in companies whose products or services make the world a better place. All three speakers asserted that, as impact investing increases in popularity, career opportunities will follow.

The Progressive Opportunities Career Fair was sponsored by the Bay Area Green Business Program – Alameda County, the City of Berkeley, the City of Oakland, the Green Chamber of Commerce, and the Sustainable Business Alliance.

Ed Church, Executive Director of the Institute for Environmental Entrepreneurship, called for sound ecological investing at this year’s Berkeley Green Gathering, which was held on November 5 at Berkeley City College.

One of 12 local speakers chosen to highlight their work building a sustainable tomorrow, Ed described how members of the Baby Boomer generation collectively have the investment power of trillionaires tied up in their retirement plans.  It is not enough merely to avoid investing in damaging companies, it is time that this generation used their combined earnings to invest in making the world better through the new field of Impact Investing.

Ed, inspired by reading the book Slow Money, said that the local food system is one of the best places people can invest, and he described how he put some of his retirement portfolio towards getting Gather, an organic locally-sourced restaurant located in Berkeley’s David Brower Center.

One of the Institute’s Sustainable Enterprise Cluster members is the Slow Money Alliance, whose executive director Ari Derfel, also runs Gather.  Ed Spoke of how Slow Money Alliance is dedicated to the very mission of investing in local food and encouraged the audience to join in their mission.

Other local speakers included Kristin Henninger, the director of Green Cafe Network; Victory Lee, the founder of the Victory Garden Foundation and Aekta Shah of the Wangari Maathai Center.

Environmentalist and author Bill McKibben delivered the keynote after being introduced by comedian and activist Josh Kornbluth. McKibben spoke of the dire realities of climate change today, and how efforts such as his own 350.org campaign are doing a great job of educating people about the problem but not yet enough to stop global warming.

IEE Executive Director Ed Church spoke at the Social Capital Markets conference held in October in San Francisco. Also known as SoCap10, it is an annual conference that attracts 1400 people from 40 countries. He was asked to speak as part of the learning track called Food Systems, on a panel devoted to “Creative Financing: Lessons Learned.”

SoCap is a multi-platform organization dedicated to the flow of capital towards social good. Their conferences connect leading global innovators – investors, foundations, institutions, and social entrepreneurs – to build this market at the intersection of money and meaning.

SoCap is building a new form of capitalism that recognizes our ability to direct the power and efficiency of market systems toward social impact, leading to a more balanced set of “returns.”

IEE coordinated the documentation of session summaries to capture the knowledge and information from the SoCap Conference.