You don't change things by fighting the current reality. To change something you need to build a new model that, will make the current model obsolete.

(Buckminster Fuller)

Born today, Hummano is an editorial and content platform launched with the purpose of promoting initiatives and opportunities within a new model of innovation and development suited to the current historical period. In addition to digital books, this new smartup will also produce digital content relevant to this complex moment of humanity, in which we need to “rebuild our future” destroyed by the reckless and greedy few.

Meer, Rede INOVA and SCBamerica are the founders of Hummano, a publisher focused on supporting and disseminating impact and innovation initiatives that promote a development model more coherent with the reality of the planet. A new model that contemplates a more balanced distribution of economic results and population in the territory, based on urban decentralization, generation of employment and income opportunities that are more intensive in labor and human intelligence rather than in technology. On the platform, digital books will be sold and events promoted, as well as lives and video programs recorded and distributed on several other platforms.

The idea was conceived based on the need to connect initiatives, projects, impact entrepreneurs, NGOs and traditional communities, with investors from around the world, focusing on the ESG and meaningful initiatives. With this objective, Hummano will act with bases in Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia, through its founders and partners”.

The first book to be released by Hummano is the reprint of the Bright Green Book One, called the “21st Century Green Book” published in 2011 with one hundred historical cases that conceptualize what we now call impact and ESG initiatives (environmental, social, governance). The new edition will have an insert that highlights 30 of the cases published, with their evolution and current situation. The cases point in the direction of sustainable innovation targeted to countries and regions with less development and HDI, in particular for small and medium-sized cities.

In parallel, the company announces the Hummano Investment Fund, focusing on smart startups from a socioeconomic and environmental point of view that are replicable, coined by Hummano as "smartups". Additionally, there will be several other projects such as the launch of three more books, the Bright Green Book Two, the Amazons and the Middle Ages 4.0. The four will be linked together, within the purpose of the publisher to promote ideas and initiatives that make the world more human, in the best sense of this word. The books and content will be supported by a network of media, applications and investments that will enable the support of the projects presented and the connection of published cases with entrepreneurs, governments, investors, and to encourage the creation of new cases in other regions.

The Bright Green Book Two will promote two hundred initiatives that contributed to building a more inclusive society, in addition to contributing directly or indirectly to climate solutions. We already have about forty cases indicated, four of which will be promoted very broadly due to their purposes, impacts, and the example they provide. The selected projects are: the Floresta Cidade project based in the Brazilian Amazon, with impact inside and outside of the country; the Embaixada Verde, a green solution brought by the Italian Embassy in Brazil to their building with solar energy, LED lighting and a zero waste program; another is the Italian winery Antinori, whose architectural concept was to build their headquarters underground, seven floors below the winery, to preserve the trees, vines and not disturb the natural landscape of the region. Finally, the Piaui Conectado from Brazil, in which the Government of the State of Piauí, through a PPP, took fibre optics and internet to all 240 cities in the State, integrating small, medium-sized cities, countryside and coastline, changing the axis of the State's development, from the great metropolitan region of the Capital to the interior.

Any person or company can register on the Hummano platform their current project, which will be submitted to a selection via the internet and to a multidisciplinary advisory board focused on the socio-economic environmental impact, replicability and not just profitability.

Hummano accumulates in his intellectual capital the presence of Antonio Vergara Meerson, president of the Meer group, publishing the digital magazine Wall Street International in six languages. Among other outstanding activities in the publishing and entrepreneurship areas, Antonio was the co-editor of Taschen Books in Italy for over twenty years with more than two thousand books published. In addition to him, Ruben Vergara Meerson, CEO of the Meer group, will join the Hummano company in the role of CEO. Amidst the news, WSI Magazine, after over ten years will adopt the name Meer. Another important element of the Hummano project comes from the importance of the ecosystem formed by the Smart City Business America institute, which brings together more than four hundred companies and holds an annual event called Inovacidade. Complementing the initial team, we have Marcos Pinotti in Brazil for application development, Rabbiel Mwasha, Tanzanian, business director for Africa and the Middle East and the entrepreneur Maggie Xu, focused on public relations in China and Hong Kong.

Ten million people in a city are a problem. Ten million people in a hundred cities are a solution.

It is a consensus in Hummano's direction that the current economic model is income concentrating and based on disruptive technological innovations, mainly of interest to privileged investment groups and big techs, including many recent IPOs and startups that have the objective of becoming unicorns, concentrating income, destroying jobs, reducing the salary value and contributing to the accentuation of the chaos we currently are in.

The purpose

Since the 1980s, the executives who form Hummano have evaluated that, information technology and large urban centers would aggravate climate issues, income concentration and cause serious social, economic, environmental, and health crises, especially in countries and regions less developed, who live fundamentally from the production of commodities. This model of innovation and technology that currently prevails, in addition to creating widespread problems in developed countries, causes an unprecedented socio-economic and environmental disaster in emerging countries, in which homeless people, refugees and the landless increase exponentially.

On the other hand, the destruction of jobs in urban centers resulting from this type of innovation destroys the purchasing power of the middle class, which finds it difficult to update or reinvent themselves professionally, especially in large centers where the lack of opportunities and the cost of living means making cities and their citizens unviable.

Given this scenario, it is necessary to take a 180-degree turn to intensely promote opportunities that generate income and work with value-added products in the countryside, in forestal regions as well as small and medium-sized cities, which attract populations from larger cities.

The preservation of forests and agroforestry systems can also be done through smart and sustainable exploitation. According to data from the Floresta Cidade project indicated in the Bright Green Book Two, one hectare of land for soy and cattle production employs a person for every hundred hectares/year, creating a huge negative environmental impact and generates US$ 700/year, with a maximum profitably of the planter within 5%. Meanwhile, agroforestry and fruit production systems, such as acerola, can generate between US$ 40 and 160 thousand per hectare/year with much less expense and impact, in addition to employing four to fifteen people.

Instead of looking for a "new normal" after Covid, which we don't know when will end, we have to encourage and promote initiatives within a development model that can reduce the consequences of the crisis generated by the pandemic in the medium and long term in order to prevent it from happening again. Our attitudes, mistakes and ambitions made the planet and nature treat us like a virus to be exterminated.

To make mistakes is human, finding together a new path is Hummano.