This book was made in the context of a 3 week long (15 day) 'Green Management' course, an elective course within the BScBA at Aalto University School of Economics, Mikkeli campus in Eastern Finland (further description of the course and syllabus can be found in the 'Course Description' section of the booklet).
This course introduced green economics as an emerging economic paradigm for the 21st century. Green economics is a holistic blend of theory, policy and practice tackling climate change, re-localization, economic measurement, eco-taxes and trade. It's goal is to move away from focusing on economic growth towards a steady state economy, which can be sustainable in the long term. Hence, it changes the way we look at economics, production, consumption, organization of businesses, and measure of growth, policies, contrasting with the ideas of conventional economics (quantity, economic growth).
The course combined theory and practices of business, policy, community engagement, and knowledge production based on green economics paradigm. While, in the classic economics view, management of resources is used for pursuing only economic purpose, in the green economics view, society is embedded in the ecosystem, where markets and economies are only structures that respond to social and environmental priorities.
The theory used in the course was based on the "Green Economics: Introduction to theory, policy and practice" by Molly Scott Cato1 . In addition to the material covered in the book, the course also covered other topics, such as the concept of ecosystem services and economic valuation, resilience, EcoStart service for SME's (visiting lecture Tiina Tervaniemi), peer-to-peer production, commons and others (see 'Course Description' for more info).
30 Students collaborated in this process, 3 were Finnish and 27 of were exchange students to the programme from institutions across France, Germany, Spain, Mexico, Canada, Korea, Ghana and Vietnam. Hence, in the context of International Business Studies, we had the most international group of perspectives.
Lecture materials, readings, and individual assignments provided the basis for developing themes and students' group projects, which were carried out in the last week of the course.
This book brings together projects done by four groups of students, which explores green economics and management on four levels: The meta level of what is the alternative for indicators besides just economic growth, on a level of international/national green policies; on a city level - how to plan and manage a green city; and a concrete example of how to build a completely sustainable green business.
The first group decided to challenge GDP as an indicator of well-being. After discussing the GDP and alternative indicators the group has come to a conclusion that a more comprehensive and greener indicator is needed to compare the sustainable development of nations. The group devised a new indicator that would incorporate all the components that are relevant, and produce an indicator that gives a better view on a nation's development in sustainability - the Index of Sustainability. To illustrate the Index of Sustainability, they applied it to data from three example countries: USA, France and Mexico.
The second group decided to look at the waste regulation and policy, as waste is a serious everyday environmental problem, but also an unnoticed part of our lives. The process of managing waste materials (collection, transport, processing and/or disposal of waste materials) is vital to protect and conserve resources for sustainable development. It faces policy pressures, while at the same time also creates big business opportunities: waste prevention, recycling and reuse, improving final disposal and monitoring. This group analysed and compared current waste policies in the developed and developing countries to examine the effectiveness of policy making and implementation within the EU, India and China. The example which is analysed in more detail within the paper is the case of electrical and electronic wastes, which are rapidly growing in a world where electronic devices form an indispensable part of modern life. The findings reveal remarkable similarities in waste management policies between the developed and developing world.
The third group project is explaining how the green economics theory can be applied to the development of a green business. The group has taken an idea of aquaponics, and showed how it can be a developed in a company, which is green and sustainable in all its actions, taking care of the people as well as of the planet, and at the same time able to generate moderate profits. TheCityFarm is a well developed, concrete example where green production, use of energy and raw materials, management, supply chain, life cycle analysis aiming at producing zero wastes, marketing mix, education of customers, and green investments are described in detail.
The fourth group has taken a look at green economics initiatives at a city-wide level, and analysed two well-known example cities, Freiburg and Dongtang. One is a initiative to build completely new eco-friendly city, with zero carbon footprint, which is supposed to be Utopian and ideal. The other is transforming an existing city with the commitment and initiative of its citizen. This research project analysed the details of planning in each city and the outcomes.
The teachers of the course, Olga Mashkina and Andrew Paterson, designed the course with the ambition that participating students explore the theory of green economics and peer-based production using collaborative commons-based knowledge production methods.
"We wish to develop a book with you, with content written by you, on the topic over the course. This is also a way to learn together about sustainable knowledge production, by actively making our knowledge and perspectives accessible."2.
Often in the degree programme students work together to make group projects, however this has taken the form of sharing electronic files and documents, moving them between different authors. Collaborative document-making, and so knowledge production has been enhanced in recent years.
Online platforms such as Wiki installations, Wikimedia Foundation projects3, Google Docs4, and Etherpad (including its clones)5 have all increased the breadth of access and experience to students, professionals and enthusiasts alike.
Hence, it was planned that in in this interdisciplinary course a collaborative and openly-accessible knowledge production tool named 'Booki' would be used as it promoted knowledge commons and open information sharing.
Booki is an open-source collaborative knowledge-production tool which focuses on assisting its users to produce real paper books individually or with others, as well as electronic publications, PDF, open-office files, webpages and more 6.
The Booki project was initiated by open media activist Adam Hyde (Berlin), programmed by lead developer Aleksandar Erkalovic (Zagreb), and the important export component developed by Douglas Bagnall (Wellington), building upon the work of Luka Frelih (Ljublijana). It emerged as a spin-off project from the FLOSS Manuals project7, which develops manuals for open-source software based on collaboration and open sharing. It is supported by commissioned 'book sprint' workshops in the open/network culture scene, open web entrepreneurship competitions (e.g. recently Transmediale Open Web Awards8), and non-profit foundation funding. It is closely connected to the free and open knowledge movement, as well as commons-oriented projects such as Wikpedia, Internet Archive and Creative Commons.
Books can be published on-line under a variety of commons-oriented licenses, and are accessible to view to all. The software is downloadable or available for free use in alpha development stage on the booki.cc server. So far in 2 years, at the time of writing, approximately 800 users have registered and tested or used the system, of which about 150 are on booki.flossmanuals.net.
Booki usage in educational course work is innovative and experimental, however Booki has supported numerous 'book sprint' productions in the free software and culture scene, where small groups of specialists have written together a booklet, book or manual over a short period of time (for example 5 days).
Within the 'Green Management' course the participating students were suggested to use the booki.cc platform in several ways: as a repository for notes (both from the teacher, and added to by students) as well as an active opinion, research and reference sharing space among each other. Although the course took place over 3 weeks, this book took its form during student group work especially in the last 8 days.
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