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Minsk International Model United Nations 2014
Instructional Guide
United Nations Environment Programme
Honorable delegates of the Environmental Commission,
My name’s Darya Sidorevich and I’m the 11th grade student at Gymnasium №1. I have a plenty of hobbies: from knitting to skiing, from psychology to math, from travelling to massage. But the favorite one is social activities, and MUNs are part of it. I’ve already experienced some national and international ones as a participant, and now I’m lucky to be your chair at the MINTMUN 2104 conference. Hope to see all of you creative, full of enthusiasm and well-prepared J
If you share one passion of making a difference on a global scale and are highly motivated to collaborate to make our world a better place to live in, global-minded, entrepreneurial, adventurous and ready to realize new ideas, if you long for upgrading your leadership skills, MINTMUN will be the best experience for you!
In case of having any questions or doubts feel free to contact me:
· On Facebook: facebook.com/dusia.sidorevich
· VKontakte: vk.com/id62622830
· By mail: dusia.minsk1@gmail.com
Looking forward to meeting you, Darya.
My name is Sergey Sivchenko. I’m second year student of Belarusian State University. And this year I'll be your Chair. The first conference, I took part in, was BelaMUN. And I should say that from the very beginning I was so scared and just didn’t know what to do there. But the conference made me feel different, made me realize that my vision of life had been changed already, and changed for the better! I do hope that soon you’ll share these feelings with me.
On my way to MINTMUN 2014 I have taken part in some conferences in Belarus and abroad. And this year I have a great honor to be the Chair of The Environmental Commission. I'll try to do my best for this conference and for you. I think together we’ll rock this conference, and you won’t be bored. And one more thing - remember, it’s up to you what your future will be like!
In case of having any questions or doubts feel free to contact me:
· On Facebook: facebook.com/sergey.sivchenko
· VKontakte: http://vk.com/sergey_sivchenko
· By mail: sergey.sivchenko@gmail.com
This year the general topic of the conference is “Post-2015 Millennium Development Goals: Challenges to Global Community”
Within this issue we will discuss two questions:
· Measures Against Entrepreneurs’ Unreasonable Resource Waste in Order to Increase Profit
· Finding the Way out of Biodiversity Loss
We encourage you to participate in the discussion to make our conference interesting and beneficial both for you and for us!
About the Committee
The United Nations Environment Program was founded by the UN in June of 1972 to coordinate the environmental activities of the UN. It currently consists of 58 member states, which are elected by the General Assembly for a four-year term. Its main focus lies on promoting international cooperation in the field of environmental policies. As a consequence they keep the environmental development under review and react to any occurring environmental problems. In this manner they assist the exchange of environmental technologies in between the UN-member states.
Measures against entrepreneurs’ unreasonable resource waste in order to increase profit
Planned obsolescence or built-in obsolescence in industrial design is a policy of planning or designing a product with an artificially limited useful life, so it will become obsolete, that is, unfashionable or no longer functional after a certain period of time. The rationale behind the strategy is to generate long-term sales volume by reducing the time between repeat purchases, (referred to as shortening the replacement cycle).
Firms that pursue this strategy believe that the additional sales revenue it creates more than offsets the additional costs of research and development and opportunity costs of existing product line cannibalization. The rewards are by no means certain: in a competitive industry, this can be a risky strategy because consumers may decide to buy from competitors.
Planned obsolescence tends to work best when a producer has at least an oligopoly (An oligopoly is a market form in which a market or industry is dominated by a small number of sellers (oligopolists). Oligopolies can result from various forms of collusion which reduce competition and lead to higher prices for consumers). Before introducing a planned obsolescence, the producer has to know that the consumer is at least somewhat likely to buy a replacement from them. In these cases of planned obsolescence, there is an information asymmetry) between the producer – who knows how long the product was designed to last – and the consumer, who does not. When a market becomes more competitive, product lifespans tend to increase. For example, when Japanese vehicles with longer lifespans entered the American market in the 1960s and 1970s, American carmakers were forced to respond by building more durable products.
Advantages and disadvantages:
Estimates of planned obsolescence can influence a company's decisions about product engineering. Therefore, the company can use the least expensive components that satisfy product lifetime projections. Such decisions are part of a broader discipline known as value engineering. As such, planned obsolescence has potential benefits for a producer.
Also, for industries, planned obsolescence stimulates demand by encouraging purchasers/putting them under pressure to buy sooner if they still want a functioning product. These products can be bought from the same manufacturer (a replacement part or a newer model), or from a competitor who might also rely on planned obsolescence. Especially in developed countries (where many industries already face a saturated market), this technique is often necessary for producers to maintain their level of revenue.
While planned obsolescence is appealing to producers, it can also do significant harm to the society in the form of negative externalities. Continuously replacing, rather than repairing, products creates more waste, pollution, uses more natural resources, and results in more consumer spending. Planned obsolescence can thus have a negative impact on the environment in aggregate. Even when planned obsolescence might help to save scarce resources per unit produced, it tends to increase output in aggregate, since due to laws of supply and demand decreases in cost and price will eventually result in increases in demand and consumption. However, the negative environmental impacts of planned obsolescence are dependent also on the process of production.
There is also the potential backlash of consumers who learn that the manufacturer invested money to make the product obsolete faster; such consumers might turn to a producer (if any exists) that offers a more durable alternative.
Here are some useful links:
About the problem:
· https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2KLyYKJGk0 – short story about what planned obsolescence is
· From 13:50 to 16:53 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KphWsnhZ4Ag&list=UUPNMR_iABvyFmc3G9i1r3Lw#t=830 - what will happen to global economy in the nearest future if there’ll be no solutions of the problem
· http://www.theplannedobsolescence.com/ - web-site dedicated to the problem of entrepreneurs’ unreasonable resource waste in order to increase profit
· https://www.adbusters.org/blogs/blackspot_blog/consumer_society_made_break.html - web-site dedicated to the problem of “consumer society”
· http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/76393.html - Greenpeace reaction on the issue of electronics obsolescence
About solving it:
· https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaouOWx3Bmo
· https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr_DGf77OhM Both videos are about saving resources
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