On December 19, 2009, the Copenhagen Climate Talks ended up with some common views on how to deal with the climate changes through its leaders’ devious negotiations. Although this conference is full of censure, buck passing and distrust, China has claimed a firm position: The China’s goal of emission reduction is through scientific discussion, open, transparent, unassailable and unconditional. It is not associated with how other counties deal with the climate changes. China will try his best to achieve what is promised with no hesitation.

The reason why China can show his confidence in the Copenhagen Climate Talks is China has been taking some actions to improve the environment these years. It is convincing that Chinese environment will receive reward in the next 10 years according to the following facts:

1. Changes in the relationship between environmental protection and economic construction in China

The Chinese government prescribed that environmental protection should coordinate with economic construction according to the environment protection laws introduced in 1989, which suggested that economic construction had precedence over environment protection. Until 2006, Chinese government held firm that economic construction should coordinate with environment protection. This shows that the transformation of the relationship between environment protection and economy construction has been completed. In the period from 1989 to 2006 is when Chinese economy experienced a rapid development and economic construction is beyond everything. Since 2006, the Chinese government has paid much more attention to environmental protection. Corporations definitely adopt different strategies to develop according to the different legislative spirit of government. For example, the introduction of Circular Economy Law contains the economic measures which are beneficial to promote circular economy development. Thus, corporations have strict standards to refer to when deciding the strategies to develop. Especially true for multinational corporations, learning about the local countries’ national conditions and the related policies of environment protection is an unavoidable step before entering the local markets.

2. Increasing advanced technology:

In China, the rapid development of advanced environmental protection technology and the wide application of advanced environmental protection equipment recently enables corporations to treat the environment in a friendly manner. In the past, those who are doing research & design on environmental technology are research institutions and some universities. In spite of the large number of research funding invested by government and good teams of research experts, these research institutions fail to make great contributions due to ignorance of market needs. Meanwhile, corporations lack funds and experts to do research and design proper environmental technologies. As corporations are paying more and more attention to their environment responsibilities, they have become the main contributors in the advancement of research and the design of environmental technologies. Enterprises who do not have qualified research department of environmental technologies are no longer competitive. Furthermore, Environment technology is developing towards clear direction that totally serving the needs of corporations.

3. Stakeholders’ awareness & benefits related

Corporations have been adopting strategies that manage environmental impacts, related to their stakeholders. Effective environment management can add value to corporations’ products or services which improves corporations’ competitive power. Corporations are more and more realizing that they will never make profits without the prosperity and stability of the whole society. Therefore, they must pay attention to the environment and the overall health of the public. This demand is getting stronger with the increasing awareness of the corporations’ stakeholders, including the customers. They also hope to be members taking part in protecting environment. Public have realistic experiences of how environment has influenced peoples’ life. For instance, it is increasingly harder to enjoy watching sparkling stars in clear sky in night due to the serious light pollution. More and more people are suffering from extremely hot and dry summer in the world because of the global warming. Acid rain and poor air quality is also hindering people’s lives. In such a background, products with environmental or energy-efficient label are much more popular compared to those traditional products. Thus a win-win situation appears: Customers gains environmental, energy-efficient and sustainable products which brings healthy life to them and feel comfortable for contributing to protect environment. Meanwhile, corporations gain favorable reputation as responsible and reliable, of cause, more financial benefits as well.

Works Referenced:
1. Liang Jiangang, Zhou Nan, Yao Zhen, Li Weiwei, 2007, Investigation of public environmental awareness, Liberation Daily

2. He Beishi, 2006, Government regulations lead to environmental technology development, People’s Daily

3. Hui Cong, 2008, Corporation environment responsibility and competitiveness power, Financial Community

4. http://www.people.com.cn/GB/huanbao/55/20010711/509030.html

Last Saturday, I attended the Design for the Disadvantaged (D4D) launch event at The Factory in Shanghai. The concept is great, how can those in the design and innovation field, design useful products and services for the other 90% of the world? Specifically, how can prominent global organizations such as Microsoft, Autodesk, Frog Design, etc. align with local partners, such as NeoCha, NextStep, etc. to come together and lend their designers and design processes for the disadvantaged in China? We are big fans of the human-centered design and innovation process and think this is a great organization to follow and get involved with as they continue to seek volunteers.

The event included many from the D4D design council and management team, including our good friend Sean from NeoCha as the MC. There will be 3 workshops running concurrently over the next few months (user research, architectural design, and industrial design) and their mission is:

To leverage design and innovation talent via a user-centered approach to improve quality of life, productivity and self-improvement of disadvantaged groups in China.

They will specifically target: migrant workers, street vendors, garbage collectors, rural poor, physically challenged, and rural students.

The event was well attended and will hopefully give the organization enough momentum to really get this off the ground and develop useful and sustainable products to make the lives of those in need better. To learn more, go to their website http://d4d-china.org/. Also for more information on design for social entrepreneurship, check out the following:

Design for the other 90% (Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum)
A Better World by Design (Brown University/Rhode Island School of Design Annual Conference)
IDEO Human Centered Design Toolkit (specially-designed for NGOs and social enterprises working with communities of need in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.)