A new and exciting concept has been launched in Luxembourg, a social enterprise with a cooperative structure based on a unique goal of "Actively Helping People with Their Socio-Economic Affairs & Lives both coming out of COVID-19 and beyond".

Having retired from the world of banking & IT consultancy, Clive MUNN (Acib) has now conceived MUNNFTSE International Investment Holdings (Luxembourg) Sarl — currently under formation — which goes many steps further than the previous concept of MFTSE Affairs S.A., back in 2016 which also had the aim of promoting socio economics, including via the FEM (Finance Eco Money) website now resurrected at https://munnftse.eu/. Whether before its time or not, Luxembourg was not quite ready then for such a socio-economic approach to business and finance. So now we have: My Ultimate Nature Nurturing Finance To Socio Economic life and affairs.

Clive talked with Chronicle.lu and explained:

"We know it has been hard to imagine, until today, with so many new cases & strains still surging around the world, but we also know there will be a time, soon, when, aided by vaccination, the COVID-19 pandemic will be behind us.

Just close your eyes for 5 minutes says Clive; join the “World of Learning”, Imagine What Could Be and “Never Stop Inspiring”. It is safe to assume that society will now be changed forever, given how disruptive the virus has been to virtually every part of our lives around the world. Of course, we still have a long way to go before life truly gets back to “Normal”, whatever that is.

However, all MUNNFTSE planning and management is based around an ethos that is first and for mostly emphasising the importance of sound investment for all which, we believe, must always be Diversified; Eco-Logical; Sustainable; Tax Optimal; Income Generating; New &, most importantly, Sharing & caring — our "DESTINS" (Destinies) in fact. Of course, this must be regularly reviewed, lived and massaged, at the same time as being controlled by our internal and where appropriate, out sourced, Audit, Communications, Insurance, Policy & Procedures, Compliance, KYC and Legal teams.”

Secondly, Clive who is surrounded by a larger group of like-minded professionals than before is optimistic that the vaccines will bring an end to the pandemic, at some point in the near future. We see now in the UK that, as at 11 January 2021, 2.6 million of the most vulnerable people in the UK have already been vaccinated and that a large majority in the UK will be covered by the autumn of this year (a bit faster than Brexit!!).

What the “World of Change” looks like after this terrible wake-up call, we believe entails a more determined focus on Getting Closer to Nature, aided by Embracing Fully the New Digital Revolution. Many of the digitisation trends we have seen, especially in the areas of Online Learning, Telemedicine & Health

& Well Being and, in particular, remote Co-Working, will become a more and more essential and inevitable part of our lives" he added.

Already MUNNFTSE have created a “World of Action” with a number of projects underway, mainly based on Co-Working, Living, Gardening, Leisure & Car Sharing concepts as well as property management. “Life is Work” and “Work is Life” as we say. In fact, the MUNNFTSE & FEM Group of Companies already have some 12 projects underway managed by 12 Ecological & Social Transition based Consultants. The first is indeed a Cooperative integrated community with Co-living, Working, Studying, Gardening, Leisure, Car Pooling and Sharing project in Leudelange. Plans include potential projects on Place de Paris, in Esch-sur-Alzette and two projects in Samoëns in France. It is also planned that the Head Office will be either in the Rue des Bains or Station areas of the International City of Luxembourg. We intend, at this stage, to seek help from the “Ville” and/or government sources and may even try to create a new House of Co-operatives. The operational part of the business/group is housed in MUNNFTSE Life (Luxembourg) Scop, a coopertive company which takes a form well know and established across Europe.

Our Consultants intend to continue assisting and promoting, especially start-up organisations and those who fully endorse our overall philosophy. There is a partnership page on our website where businesses can exchange their logo with ours in a co-operative, free way (Like freely available software). The idea is, of course, to increase SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) i.e. coming first or near the top in, for example, Google searches but it will also become a New Directory for Like Minded People and Businesses.

They say that “Together is Better” and we believe that, in this way, we can really move now to change things for everyone, bringing an end to the pure version of financial capitalism which disgusts so many of us, at all ages. Finance (sharing resources), Business, Journalism and everything only for Good with only ethical projects and articles designed to help and serve one and other in order to eliminate greed, the terrible enemy of the poor and underprivileged. Providing beautiful services and accommodation at a fair price, not an ever ballooning unsustainable bubble like the current stock exchange or property markets. 

So www.MUNNFTSE.eu and their team, look forward to meeting and exchanging ideas with you. At their site you can choose to join and blog or participate in their community at different levels. Alternatively perhaps you would like to participate in their exciting new cooperative by buying a share at only €10. This would, of course, not only enable you to share your ideas with the community but also to benefit from future group dividends and all the other benefits associated with humanitarian co-operatives”.

The MUNNFTSE & FEM Group of Companies also support ALN the Association Luxembourg-Nepal Asbl charity which helps to reduce poverty in Nepal. https://aln-luxembourg-nepal.org/

Inspired by insects of the desert, who get water by harvesting night dew between their legs, and by fog nets in Chili, an Italian designer invented water towers to harvest water from the air.

The first prototypes of Warkawater towers have been built in Ethiopia. Now, there is a crowdfunding campaign launched on crowdfunding platform GoFundMe: http://www.gofundme.com/warkawater. This campaign will also explain you in detail how this miracle works.

Wind power is reported to have generated enough energy to supply 1.9 million homes in Scotland or 35.9% (April 2016). This is great news for those in favour of new ecological and sustainable power supplies. Together with solar power, ecologically generated power is really starting to make a dent on overall supplies, contrary to those who have been sceptical in the past. 

This was also one of those are unusually positive weeks in the climate change area and sometimes those ‘good weeks’ are few and far between. However the Paris deal was signed by the key players in New York and climate change moved to centre stage in the Australian federal election also. The historic agreement on climate change marked a major milestone with a record 175 countries signing on to it on the opening day. But world leaders made clear more action is needed, and quickly, to fight the relentless rise in global temperatures.

Follow, discuss and help keep up the momentum on Finance Eco Money See also https://www.finance-eco-money.org/fempower/crowdfunding/item/empowering-and-financing-solar-powered-desalination 

In order to reduce the use of plastic, made from the old non-sustainable oil, one can use some ecological straws to sip their favorite beverage.

We can find mainly two categories of so-called "ecological straws": reusable or not.

Reusable straws are made from durable materials, such as steel, reed or bamboo. In the package, you will usually find a tapered cleaning brush to keep your pipe neat day after day, and a small bag to transport them in your pocket, assuring that you will always have them when you need, at friends or at a bar.

Non-reusable straws can be made from sugar, pasta, apple, cane, wheat or paper and cardboard.

No problem with reed, apple, cane or bamboo, which are compostable after their end of life. Nature goes back to nature. Here, the same destination is promised to both reusable and single-use natural straws.

Is it worth buying bamboo straws? Won't they  break or disintegrate after a couple of uses?

No, indeed, after trying some bamboo straws, I can confirm that they last long enough.

But what do you think of straws made from stainless steel or aluminium? They require to extract some ore, refine it, shape it, requiring then a certain amount of energy. Maybe not so much for a single straw, though much more than just an item made from a plant, growing by itself and requiring nothing but sun and water.

Same interrogation with straws made from paper. Like steel, this is a highly processed material. Even recycled paper needs loads of water and energy to see another life as a straw in your glass.

And what would we do with these steel or paper straws after use? How will they be recycled (if ever) when you throw them away?

Even though I always tend to prefer durable objects which can have a long life, I am not sure to be very fond of steel, aluminium or cardboard as a material to make straws, finally.

I guess I will stick to my wonderful bamboo straws and keep them in my bag.

All media are enthusiastic about the constant increase of car-pooling; in France, it grows by 100% per year, its champion being Blablacar with 2 million passengers per month.

But is car-pooling really good for the planet? Not so sure, in fact.

For sure, 2 million passengers per month represent something considerable, representing more than 2 000 double-size trains.

Studies show that mostly, car-pooling websites attract users who consider that train or plane are too expensive. For sure, for 2 persons or more, fares of train journey cannot compete with sharing cost of riding by car, and if you are alone, only low-fare train tickets can compete with car.

But what about CO2 emission?

The myTripSet too on website SNCFVoyages.com, which compares prices and CO2 emissions, gives some interesting information. Train is widely the least CO2 emitter. E.g. a journey Paris-Nantes in TGV emits only 4 kg of CO2. To be compared to 75 kg of a car * and 90 kg of plane. SNCF estimates that average CO2 emission level of train is 13 g per person and per km.

OK, then car-pooling is not environment friendly if we look at gross figures.

Anther argument, does car-pooling lower the number of cars on roads?

It would be great, but truth leads us to answer no in fact: even if they don't have paying passengers, most drivers would not cancel their journey and, mostly, they would not travel by train either.

On the other side, most passengers do not own a car: if not travelling by car-pooling, most passengers would have cancelled or postponed their journey, instead of travelling by train which they often cannot afford. Then, contrarily to a common idea, long-distance car-pooling websites (like Blablacar) ease and increase the number of travels by car, and they take some customers to train, which is more ecological.

This is also valid for home-to-work daily rides: car-pooling permits to share parking places but its use is an incentive to come to work by car instead of using bus or train. Once again, not very ecological.

As a conclusion, car-pooling is not very environment-friendly. However, the other arguments are still valid, like not travelling alone on a long journey, sharing cost or increasing your security (spontaneous and local car-pooling like www.zenoncar.com permits to find a driver to return home if you are unable to drive your own car, e.g. drunk or injured).

I remember when we were in Oxfordshire back in 1989 there was a programme to reintroduce red kites into England and Scotland. http://www.yorkshireredkites.net/index.php/red-kite-info/history-red-kite-reintroduction-programme

Now there is a lecture here in Luxembourg university to explore the controversy between Red Kites and wind power. http://www.chronicle.lu/categorieslivingthings/item/16893-lecture-to-explore-controversy-between-wind-farms-and-rare-red-kites 

We look forward your thoughts and ideas and to following this on https://finance-eco-money.org/discover/ecology-energy  

On Thursday 10 March 2016 Citim (Centre for Information on the Third world,55 avenue de la Liberté, L-1931 Luxembourg) launched "Need for Seed" a project to Examine Food Sovereignty, Food Security and cultivated biodiversity.

The event facilitated a free, public, exchange of information on world-wide seed issues, primarily concerning the dangers of genetically modified food and was introduced by Jean Feyder, Ancien Ambassador for Luxembourg at WTO (World Trade Organisation), Geneva and member of the ASTM Board of Directors and author of "La Faim Tue" (Hunger Kills). ASTM stands for Action Solidaire Tiers Monde (Third World Action Solidarity).

Frank Adams, founding member of the Luxembourg SEED network and an expert on cultivated biodiversity & food quality showed slides and lead a group discussion, with several other practisioners from the cultivated biodiversity space, in Luxembourg: Steve Schwartz of Kraizschouschteschgaart and Klouschtergaart, Georges Moes of Natur & ëmwelt, as well as Estrella Catarata, director of the Philippine Network of Food Security Programmes (PNFSP). Madam Catarata is one of ASTM's partners from the Philippines and she informed the group of the current situation regarding small Filipino farmers and their efforts to save seed sovereignty in their country.

The group emphasised the importance of simple and traditional seeds as the basis for the constant struggle on food sovereignty from the north to the south of our planet. Today the standardisation of seeds especially from genetically modified plants endangers our heritage and the precious biodiversity of our food and livelihood.

With the "Need for Seed" project, CITIM, in collaboration with three local players, Network SEED Luxembourg, the private initiative Kraizschouschteschgaart, and Natur & ëmwelt, want to encourage and help us to bring the greatest possible biodiversity to our own gardens and also to help consumers and growers alike to reclaim their self-sufficiency in food production.

MFTSE Affairs S.A., aims to support this new venture and share opinions on FEM.lu

We basically want to build an interactive web-site for the exchange of financial and ecological ideas and knowledge amongst the general public and different financial players in a totally transparent and non biased way. Our ultimate aim is to help society realise that finance and ecology are essential elements to business for good, reaching the poorest of the poor and eliminating extreme poverty.

An enthusiastic speech by Chris Doude van Troostwijk of Luxembourg School of Religion & Society: "Ideas awake philosophers from a Kant perspective he declared". (Immanuel Kant argued that moral principles were simply products of reason. Kant believed that the incorporation of consequences into moral deliberation was a deep mistake, since it denies the necessity of practical maxims in governing the working of the will. According to Kant, reason requires that we confirm our actions to the categorical imperative which is an absolute duty).

GR Business Days, which took place on the Wednesday 17th and Thursday 18th June, has become an important rendez-vous for business, SME’s and innovative start-ups. Clearly, GR Business Days which is organized by the Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce is now more than just a show, demonstrating the considerable dynamism of the Greater Region internationally.

The Inaccessible Pinacle on the Isle of Skye. Abseiling off the summit having climbed the other side, October 2014. Probably one of the hardest Munro's (all mountains over 3,000 ft in Scotland). Nothing compared to the challenges before the finance industry, helping to change the approach to poverty and the environment. 

Very good and encouraging traction has been recieved recently ranging from agreement with different bodies to promote MFTSE's business to co-operation interest from the fund association - Alfi, especially concerning Financial Literacy. We will soon be able to capitalise on all this as we publish more articles, obtain feedback and build the web-site: finance-eco-money.lu.

Climate Change: The Week That Was for 27 August 2015

Can you find positive ways to help, no matter how small?

Stephen Platt was a guest speaker at a The Institute For Global Financial Integrity in Luxembourg recently. He spoke about the role the international financial services industry has played in facilitating and laundering criminal funds and property.