Tuesday, December 1, 2015

January 2016 Shambhala Sun magazine

Thich Nhat Hanh, Shambhala Sun, Lion's Roar
It’s our honor to dedicate the January 2016 issue of the Shambhala Sun to one of the great Buddhist teachers of our time, Thich Nhat Hanh. This special issue celebrates his courageous life, his helpful teachings, his beautiful art and his profound legacy.
For a limited time, use this link to subscribe and start your subscription with this special issue (U.S. subscribers only). Plus, receive a free 50-page digital collection of Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings.

Thich Nhat Hanh: Celebrating a Life of Courage, Compassion & Enlightenment

HIS COURAGEOUS LIFE: THE PHOTOBIOGRAPHY

From his birth in Vietnam, to monkhood, to his creation and lifelong embodiment of Engaged Buddhism, Lindsay Kyte presents Thich Nhat Hanh’s inspiring story, illustrated with rare and historic photographs from each of its eras:
  • The Birth of Engaged Buddhism: 1926–1959
  • The School of Youth for Social Service: 1960–1965
  • The Order of Interbeing: 1966
  • Exile: 1966–2004
  • Return to Vietnam: 2005–2008
  • World Teacher

Sunday, November 29, 2015

Meeting Malala

Two weeks ago, I had a big honor. I got to spend some time in New York with Malala Yousafzai, one of the most courageous people I’ve ever met.
As I’m sure you know, Malala is the Pakistani teenager who was shot by a Talib gunman for her belief that all girls should be able to go to school. After meeting her, I can tell you that there is much more to Malala than the story of a brutal shooting and a miraculous recovery. She’s a really impressive person and a compelling, sophisticated advocate. I loved chatting with her and just wish the conversation could have gone on longer.
Even though she nearly died, will have lifelong physical challenges, and is living in exile in England, she harbors no ill will toward the man who shot her. Rather than dwelling in a place of anger or fear, she’s sweet and funny. And even more impressive, she has managed to keep her feet on the ground despite the rush of attention she has gotten since she became the youngest Nobel laureate in history and, as New York Times columnist Nick Kristof wrote, “perhaps the most visible teenage girl in the world.”
That humility is a good thing because her visibility is about to increase yet again. The Academy Award–winning filmmaker Davis Guggenheim, who spent the better part of a year living and traveling with Malala and her family, has just released his feature-length documentary He Named Me Malala. (Full disclosure: Davis Guggenheim is a friend of mine.)
I recently had a chance to see the movie with Phoebe, my 13-year-old daughter, and a friend of hers. I thought the movie was great. And so did Phoebe. She was truly inspired by Malala and her mission to make sure all girls can get a high-quality education. Keep in mind that Phoebe is already quite connected with the issue of girls’ education, in part because she got to spend ten days last summer as an assistant teacher in a primary school in Rwanda. But I believe that most people her age and older who see this movie will be compelled by the story and how well Davis tells it.
I loved how we see Malala flying around the world defending life, liberty, and the pursuit of education one day and the next being a normal teenager struggling with homework and her brothers. I also loved the visually stunning animated sequences that bring the backstory to life.
I was most compelled by the film’s exploration of how Malala’s father, Ziauddin, encouraged his daughter to find her voice and speak out with courage, as he wished he could have done earlier in his own life. Malala made it clear in the movie and in my conversation with her that she does not believe her father pushed her onto her life path or put her in harm’s way. But I suspect the movie will spark a lot of provocative conversations among parents about risk-taking, moral courage, and how we shape our children to stand up for what’s right.
I’m quite sure that most moviegoers will leave the theater feeling far more hope than grief—just like Malala herself. And they’ll probably ask the same question Phoebe asked me: “How can I help?” (For a good answer to that question, read the post Now Is Your Time to Stand #withMalala.”)
I think Davis accomplished exactly what he set out to do. Despite having to overcome the “spoiler-alert” challenge of telling a story whose ending we already know, he grabs us by the lapels and motivates us to act. Personally, I’ll be looking for ways our foundation can help Malala use that magnificent voice of hers to the best possible effect.

Saturday, November 28, 2015

some good examples of successful Malaysians to inspire you:
Hope these famous figures inspired you to chase your dreams and work really, really hard to achieve them!
If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much. – Jim Rohn

Reductions in environmental impact, fueled by workflow innovations through “Digital Manufacturing”

Konica Minolta’s next-generation digital manufacturing production system leverages ICT and automation to achieve workflow innovations while decreasing the environmental burden. We spoke with Senior Executive Director Shingo Asai, head of Konica Minolta Inc.’s manufacturing headquarters for Business Technologies, on current and future plans for this revolutionary system.
Factory
Asai Profile
Operating a next-generation production system
This May, Konica Minolta began operations in earnest at its new production facility in Malaysia, known as Konica Minolta Technologies (Malaysia) (KMMY). This facility is the company’s first base of operations for its revolutionary “digital manufacturing” production system. The site uses a system that’s ground-breaking in every sense of the word to increase quality, improve production efficiency, and save energy; it could truly be called the next generation of manufacturing. The new system revolutionizes the production process, significantly reducing its environmental impact. But how was this system created?
“‘Digital Manufacturing’ is a means to an end that can be found in workflow innovation,” says Shingo Asai, Senior Executive Officer at Konica Minolta and head of the firm’s Business Technologies production headquarters. “Until now, we’ve pursued a number of policies on all sides, from the development stage to the production site. We’ve employed modulization and unit production in order to reduce wastes of energy and resources; we’ve reduced the number of parts in our devices, making them more lightweight. With digital manufacturing, in addition to this accumulated knowledge, we’ve revolutionized the manufacturing process from the ground up and implemented a system designed to completely optimize production and minimize resource consumption.”
The twin keys to these achievements are ICT and automation technology. To cite a specific example of reduced resource consumption, the internal divisions produce a huge amount of paperwork on a day-by-day basis. With a system that cuts that paperwork down to only what is truly necessary—one that can use ICT to organize and share it automatically—paper will no longer be necessary. It would also allow Konica Minolta to consolidate the number of printers and PCs used for document creation. Furthermore, by using ICT to link the data collected from the sensors on the production line with the management cockpit, supervisors can predict in advance when production defects will occur and respond appropriately. Because of such precautions, they are able to fix production operations and reduce unnecessary disposal.
The goals of automation, on the other hand, are improvements in speed, accuracy and a reduction in waste. Using robots to support accurate production minimizes disparities in quality and the number of defective products. In other words, the amount of energy and resources expended and waste generated in the production process is decreased, reducing the environmental burden. Efficiency and environmental responsibility are connected on every level.
Diagram
Accelerating efficiency with open source
Asai says the important point in optimizing the efficiency of digital manufacturing is connectedness—and being open.
“By connecting everything from engineering to production—and, in the future, the customer base —through ICT and the IoT, we can monitor the production line and the operation of our products in real time, as well as apply current analyses and operational indicators. We will also be able to provide information and know-how from not only our firm, but our suppliers. This connection will allow us to accelerate our efficiency.”
By developing its overseas production bases early on, Konica Minolta has been sharing its in-house manufacturing technology and know-how with local suppliers, and work together with them to cut costs and make other improvements. Through its inhouse implementation of digital manufacturing, Konica Minolta will also be sharing its methods of decreasing the environmental impact with its suppliers. By sharing its accumulated information and in-house knowledge via an open-source model, Konica Minolta aims to amplify dramatically the impact of its innovations.
“There are limits to what we can do in response to environmental issues with in-house initiatives alone. It is important, then, that we are open in sharing information with suppliers with no financial ties with our company, thereby increasing our impact significantly. In regards to digital manufacturing as well, we’ve already discussed our ideas with our clients, and our suppliers in Japan, Malaysia, China, and South Korea agree with this direction.”
In the future, ICT will connect Konica Minolta’s Malaysia production base, its overseas suppliers, and its management cockpit in Japan, allowing for manufacturing data to be monitored, adjustments to be made automatically, and the occurrence of defective products to be sharply reduced.
By operating a global network in this manner, Konica Minolta will establish a production system with a low environmental impact that is flexible, with an impact independent of individual persons, sites, countries, or other changes.
Growth and the environment in Asia
Many of Konica Minolta’s local production sites and suppliers are concentrated in the booming Asia region. We asked Asai for his thoughts on growth and environmental impact in the region.
“The countries in a growth pattern will probably not follow the same path to growth that the West and Japan did. With the differences in the infrastructure environment, the nations of Asia are leapfrogging over landlines in favor of the diffusion of mobile phones. Similarly, a variety of technologies are also being introduced in digital formats. The digital printing systems on which our company is focused provide output on demand as needed, when that output is needed, in the exact quantities needed; it’s a waste-free model that’s very environmentally friendly.
“It was thought that our system will not be able to be sold in Asia due to the high initial outlay, but the reality proved to be quite different. We’ve encountered cases where digital has been the choice right from the very start. Asia’s economy is in dynamic motion, and it’s better to believe, we think, that demand in the region will mirror that of the West. In addition, concern for the environment is sharply on the rise in many nations. Therefore, we think that a system that facilitates both economic development and lower energy and resource consumption should be actively promoted in Asia as well.”
At Konica Minolta, environmental practices are treated as corporate practices. The operation of KMMY is sure to become a model for addressing environmental issues. The revolution it will prompt in Asia—and the world—demands our future attention.

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Poverty Facts and Stats

Author And Page Information

  1. Almost half the world — over three billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day.
    At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day.Source1
  2. More than 80 percent of the world’s population lives in countries where income differentials are widening.Source2
  3. The poorest 40 percent of the world’s population accounts for 5 percent of global income. The richest 20 percent accounts for three-quarters of world income.Source3
  4. According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.”Source4
  5. Around 27-28 percent of all children in developing countries are estimated to be underweight or stunted. The two regions that account for the bulk of the deficit are South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
    If current trends continue, the Millennium Development Goals target of halving the proportion of underweight children will be missed by 30 million children, largely because of slow progress in Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.Source5
  6. Based on enrollment data, about 72 million children of primary school age in the developing world were not in school in 2005; 57 per cent of them were girls. And these are regarded as optimistic numbers.Source6
  7. Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.Source7
  8. Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn’t happen.Source8
  9. Infectious diseases continue to blight the lives of the poor across the world. An estimated 40 million people are living with HIV/AIDS, with 3 million deaths in 2004. Every year there are 350–500 million cases of malaria, with 1 million fatalities: Africa accounts for 90 percent of malarial deaths and African children account for over 80 percent of malaria victims worldwide.Source9
  10. Water problems affect half of humanity:
    • Some 1.1 billion people in developing countries have inadequate access to water, and 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation.
    • Almost two in three people lacking access to clean water survive on less than $2 a day, with one in three living on less than $1 a day.
    • More than 660 million people without sanitation live on less than $2 a day, and more than 385 million on less than $1 a day.
    • Access to piped water into the household averages about 85% for the wealthiest 20% of the population, compared with 25% for the poorest 20%.
    • 1.8 billion people who have access to a water source within 1 kilometre, but not in their house or yard, consume around 20 litres per day. In the United Kingdom the average person uses more than 50 litres of water a day flushing toilets (where average daily water usage is about 150 liters a day. The highest average water use in the world is in the US, at 600 liters day.)
    • Some 1.8 million child deaths each year as a result of diarrhoea
    • The loss of 443 million school days each year from water-related illness.
    • Close to half of all people in developing countries suffering at any given time from a health problem caused by water and sanitation deficits.
    • Millions of women spending several hours a day collecting water.
    • To these human costs can be added the massive economic waste associated with the water and sanitation deficit.… The costs associated with health spending, productivity losses and labour diversions … are greatest in some of the poorest countries. Sub-Saharan Africa loses about 5% of GDP, or some $28.4 billion annually, a figure that exceeds total aid flows and debt relief to the region in 2003.Source10
  11. Number of children in the world
    2.2 billion
    Number in poverty
    1 billion (every second child)
    Shelter, safe water and health
    For the 1.9 billion children from the developing world, there are:
    • 640 million without adequate shelter (1 in 3)
    • 400 million with no access to safe water (1 in 5)
    • 270 million with no access to health services (1 in 7)
    Children out of education worldwide
    121 million
    Survival for children
    Worldwide,
    • 10.6 million died in 2003 before they reached the age of 5 (same as children population in France, Germany, Greece and Italy)
    • 1.4 million die each year from lack of access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation
    Health of children
    Worldwide,
    • 2.2 million children die each year because they are not immunized
    • 15 million children orphaned due to HIV/AIDS (similar to the total children population in Germany or United Kingdom)
  12. Rural areas account for three in every four people living on less than US$1 a day and a similar share of the world population suffering from malnutrition. However, urbanization is not synonymous with human progress. Urban slum growth is outpacing urban growth by a wide margin.Source12
  13. Approximately half the world’s population now live in cities and towns. In 2005, one out of three urban dwellers (approximately 1 billion people) was living in slum conditions.Source13
  14. In developing countries some 2.5 billion people are forced to rely on biomass—fuelwood, charcoal and animal dung—to meet their energy needs for cooking. In sub-Saharan Africa, over 80 percent of the population depends on traditional biomass for cooking, as do over half of the populations of India and China.Source14
  15. Indoor air pollution resulting from the use of solid fuels [by poorer segments of society] is a major killer. It claims the lives of 1.5 million people each year, more than half of them below the age of five: that is 4000 deaths a day. To put this number in context, it exceeds total deaths from malaria and rivals the number of deaths from tuberculosis.Source15
  16. In 2005, the wealthiest 20% of the world accounted for 76.6% of total private consumption. The poorest fifth just 1.5%:
    The poorest 10% accounted for just 0.5% and the wealthiest 10% accounted for 59% of all the consumption:
  17. 1.6 billion people — a quarter of humanity — live without electricity:
    Breaking that down further:
    Number of people living without electricity
    RegionMillions without electricity
    South Asia706
    Sub-Saharan Africa547
    East Asia224
    Other101
  18. The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the 41 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (567 million people) is less than the wealth of the world’s 7 richest people combined.Source18
  19. World gross domestic product (world population approximately 6.5 billion) in 2006 was $48.2 trillion in 2006.
    • The world’s wealthiest countries (approximately 1 billion people) accounted for $36.6 trillion dollars (76%).
    • The world’s billionaires — just 497 people (approximately 0.000008% of the world’s population) — were worth $3.5 trillion (over 7% of world GDP).
    • Low income countries (2.4 billion people) accounted for just $1.6 trillion of GDP (3.3%)
    • Middle income countries (3 billion people) made up the rest of GDP at just over $10 trillion (20.7%).Source19
  20. The world’s low income countries (2.4 billion people) account for just 2.4% of world exportsSource20
  21. The total wealth of the top 8.3 million people around the world “rose 8.2 percent to $30.8 trillion in 2004, giving them control of nearly a quarter of the world’s financial assets.”
    In other words, about 0.13% of the world’s population controlled 25% of the world’s financial assets in 2004.
    A conservative estimate for 2010 finds that at least a third of all private financial wealth, and nearly half of all offshore wealth, is now owned by world’s richest 91,000 people – just 0.001% of the world’s population.
    The next 51 percent of all wealth is owned by the next 8.4 million — just 0.14% of the world’s population. Almost all of it has managed to avoid all income and estate taxes, either by the countries where it has been invested and or where it comes fromSource21
  22. For every $1 in aid a developing country receives, over $25 is spent on debt repayment.Source22
  23. 51 percent of the world’s 100 hundred wealthiest bodies are corporations.Source23
  24. The wealthiest nation on Earth has the widest gap between rich and poor of any industrialized nation.Source24
  25. The poorer the country, the more likely it is that debt repayments are being extracted directly from people who neither contracted the loans nor received any of the money.Source25
  26. In 1960, the 20% of the world’s people in the richest countries had 30 times the income of the poorest 20% — in 1997, 74 times as much.Source26
  27. An analysis of long-term trends shows the distance between the richest and poorest countries was about:
    • 3 to 1 in 1820
    • 11 to 1 in 1913
    • 35 to 1 in 1950
    • 44 to 1 in 1973
    • 72 to 1 in 1992Source27
  28. “Approximately 790 million people in the developing world are still chronically undernourished, almost two-thirds of whom reside in Asia and the Pacific.”Source28
  29. For economic growth and almost all of the other indicators, the last 20 years [of the current form of globalization, from 1980 - 2000] have shown a very clear decline in progress as compared with the previous two decades [1960 - 1980]. For each indicator, countries were divided into five roughly equal groups, according to what level the countries had achieved by the start of the period (1960 or 1980). Among the findings:
    • Growth: The fall in economic growth rates was most pronounced and across the board for all groups or countries.
    • Life Expectancy: Progress in life expectancy was also reduced for 4 out of the 5 groups of countries, with the exception of the highest group (life expectancy 69-76 years).
    • Infant and Child Mortality: Progress in reducing infant mortality was also considerably slower during the period of globalization (1980-1998) than over the previous two decades.
    • Education and literacy: Progress in education also slowed during the period of globalization.Source29
  30. A mere 12 percent of the world’s population uses 85 percent of its water, and these 12 percent do not live in the Third World.Source30
  31. Consider the global priorities in spending in 1998
    Global Priority$U.S. Billions
    Cosmetics in the United States8
    Ice cream in Europe11
    Perfumes in Europe and the United States12
    Pet foods in Europe and the United States17
    Business entertainment in Japan35
    Cigarettes in Europe50
    Alcoholic drinks in Europe105
    Narcotics drugs in the world400
    Military spending in the world780
    And compare that to what was estimated as additional costs to achieve universal access to basic social services in all developing countries:
    Global Priority$U.S. Billions
    Basic education for all6
    Water and sanitation for all9
    Reproductive health for all women12
    Basic health and nutrition13

Notes And Sources

  1. Sources:
    This figure is based on purchasing power parity (PPP), which basically suggests that prices of goods in countries tend to equate under floating exchange rates and therefore people would be able to purchase the same quantity of goods in any country for a given sum of money. That is, the notion that a dollar should buy the same amount in all countries. Hence if a poor person in a poor country living on a dollar a day moved to the U.S. with no changes to their income, they would still be living on a dollar a day.
    The new poverty line of $1.25 a day was recently announced by the World Bank (in 2008). For many years before that it had been $1 a day. But the $1 a day used then would be $1.45 a day now if just inflation was accounted for.
    The new figures from the World Bank therefore confirm concerns that poverty has not been reduced by as much as was hoped, although it certainly has dropped since 1981.
    However, it appears that much of the poverty reduction in the last couple of decades almost exclusively comes from China:
    • China’s poverty rate fell from 85% to 15.9%, or by over 600 million people
    • China accounts for nearly all the world’s reduction in poverty
    • Excluding China, poverty fell only by around 10%
    The use of the poverty line of $1 a day had long come under criticism for seeming arbitrary and using poor quality and limited data thus risking an underestimate of poverty. The $1.25 a day level is accompanied with some additional explanations and reasoning, including that it is a common level found amongst the poorest countries, and that $2.50 represents a typical poverty level amongst many more developing countries.
    The $10 dollar a day figure above is close to poverty levels in the US, so is provided here to give a more global perspective to these numbers, although the World Bank has felt it is not a meaningful number for the poorest because they are unfortunately unlikely to reach that level any time soon.
    For further details on this (as well as some additional charts), see Poverty Around The World on this web site. back
  2. 2007 Human Development Report (HDR), United Nations Development Program, November 27, 2007, p.25. 
  3. Ibid
  4. See Today, around 21,000 children died around the world from this web site. (Note that the statistic cited uses children as those under the age of five. If it was say 6, or 7, the numbers would be even higher.)
  5. See the following:
    • 2007 Human Development Report (HDR), United Nations Development Program, November 27, 2007, p.25. (The report also notes that although India is rising economically, “the bad news is that this has not been translated into accelerated progress in cutting under-nutrition. One-half of all rural children [in India] are underweight for their age—roughly the same proportion as in 1992.”)
    • Millennium Development Goals Report 2007 PDF formatted document
  6. Millennium Development Goals Report 2007 PDF formatted document. The report importantly notes that “As high as this number seems, surveys show that it underestimates the actual number of children who, though enrolled, are not attending school. Moreover, neither enrolment nor attendance figures reflect children who do not attend school regularly. To make matters worse, official data are not usually available from countries in conflict or post-conflict situations. If data from these countries were reflected in global estimates, the enrolment picture would be even less optimistic.”
  7. The State of the World’s Children, 1999UNICEF
  8. State of the World, Issue 287 - Feb 1997, New Internationalist
  9. 2007 Human Development Report (HDR), United Nations Development Program, November 27, 2007, p.25. 
  10. 2006 United Nations Human Development Report, pp.6, 7, 35 
  11. State of the World’s Children, 2005UNICEF
  12. 2007 Human Development Report (HDR), United Nations Development Program, November 27, 2007, p.25. 
  13. Millennium Development Goals Report 2007 PDF formatted document
  14. Ibid, p.45 
  15. Ibid, p.45 
  16. World Development Indicators 2008, World Bank, August 2008 
  17. Millennium Development Goals Report 2007 PDF formatted document, p.44 
  18. See the following:
  19. See the following:
  20. Trade Data, World Bank Data & Statistics, accessed March 3, 2008 
  21. Eileen Alt Powell, Some 600,000 join millionaire ranks in 2004Associate Press, June 9, 2005; James Henry, The Price of Offshore Revisited PDF formatted document, Tax Justice Network, July 2012, p.36 
  22. Based on World Bank data (accessed March 3, 2008) as follows:
  23. See the following:
  24. Log cabin to White House? Not any moreThe Observer, April 28, 2002
  25. Debt - The facts, Issue 312 - May 1999, New Internationalist
  26. 1999 Human Development ReportUnited Nations Development Programme
  27. Ibid
  28. World Resources Institute Pilot Analysis of Global Ecosystems, February 2001, (in the Food Feed and Fiber section). Note, that despite the food production rate being better than population growth rate, there is still so much hunger around the world.
  29. The Scorecard on Globalization 1980-2000: Twenty Years of Diminished Progress, by Mark Weisbrot, Dean Baker, Egor Kraev and Judy Chen, Center for Economic Policy and Research, August 2001.
  30. Maude Barlow, Water as Commodity - The Wrong PrescriptionThe Institute for Food and Development Policy, Backgrounder, Summer 2001, Vol. 7, No. 3
  31. The state of human development, United Nations Human Development Report 1998, Chapter 1, p.37)