World Best Practices Magazine
Monday, January 13, 2014
I am now a regular contributor to the UN quarterly, World Best Practices Magazine. How that came about is an interesting story.
My first encounter with the UNEP’s Sustainable Buildings and Climate Initiative was at the World Expo in Shanghai summer of 2010,
I was a great fan of the BROAD Pavilion at the Expo (they assembled their pre-fabricated Pavilion in just 24 hours using one-sixth of the materials and producing 1% of the waste in construction) and the company’s Chairman Zhang Yue. I heard that he was going to be at their Pavilion and I decided to go there to see if I could meet him. Little did I know that they were hosting the UNEP Sustainable Building Conference that day and that was the very reason Zhang Yue was there. Nevertheless I called on my old conference crashing techniques and gained admittance. Once in, I contacted an assistant of his that I had previously talked to and asked her if she could get me some time with the Chairman. Zhang Yue had previously received a Chinese translation of a piece I had done on China leading the World on the Soft Path (advocating Amory Lovin’s analysis decades earlier). It indeed reflected what he was in fact doing and he had indicated that he wanted to talk to me.
I was able to meet and talk with him and he invited me to visit BROAD’s corporate headquarters in Changsha the next week (the outcome of that and subsequent meetings will be the subject of another section on this site). So mission accomplished, but I also decided to remain in the conference and observe what this august assemblage of international experts had to say about sustainable building.
I was then and still am quite skeptical of many of the hard path solutions discussed but was also pleased to hear examples of others that have joined BROAD on an alternative path.
As the conference began to wind down and the concluding wine reception approached, which I definitely was not going to miss, I was given a real surprise. Chairman Yue’s assistant came up to me and asked if I would give the concluding summarizing remarks. I was stunned, after all I am not even suppose to be there. I first thought that she was joking but she continued to insist that it was Chairman Yue’s wish that I do so. Then I searched for excuses, I hadn’t brought any presentation materials, I am not prepared… etc. Then it dawned on me that I had better try if I wanted to really connect with Zhang Yue (who I had come to see as China’s Ray Anderson), so I agreed.
Now what am I going to do? Now understand throughout the entire day one speaker after another from a Whose Who list of international agencies and concerns had been discussing their many programs. To tell you the truth I wasn’t paying attention a lot of the time and now it was up to me to ‘summarize’ it all. I decided rather than panic, which was my first thought, to just go with the flow and to be spontaneous when it was my time. When it came and I was called to the front to join the panel of all previous speakers, a calm came over me and from somewhere within I drew on (probably my time with the US Dept. of Energy where it was in charge of Public information and Education on their new Renewable Energy Division) a way to bring it altogether.
“What is needed now is to spread the word of the replicable examples of proven success in increased efficiency and effectiveness… It is a public information and education task, ” I said. It was a perfect concluding message.
That was my first encounter with the UNEP program but it wasn’t until the second that the invitation to write for their publication came. This time their Sustainable Building Conference (2013) was being held at the BROAD headquarters in Changsha. I was invited and decided to attend and visit my friends at BROAD again. We stayed in the 30-storied Hotel, called T30, on Lake Dongting (which was completely assembled in 15 days).
There I met the editor of their World Best Practices Magazine who was impressed with my understanding of the host’s (BROAD Sustainable Building Division) innovations and the lessons they provided. She asked if I could write it up for their next edition. I agreed and it has appeared in the magazine’s Vol 17/18, Summer/Autumn 2013. Afterwards they asked me to be a regular contributor to which I agreed . The upcoming issue will include my, “China can lead the World on the Soft Path.”