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A fair share
Helen Clarkson, February 15th 2010, General, Leadership, Public Sector
Peter Mandelson’s famous statement that Labour is “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich” has come back to haunt the party and will no doubt be wheeled out again in the coming election campaign.
A new report notes that 13 years of Labour rule have done little to reverse the huge growth in the gap between rich and poor that developed under Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government in the 1980s.
The National Equality Panel (commissioned by Harriet Harman MP) published its report 'An Anatomy of Economic Equality in the UK' in January. It contains some worrying facts and figures about the distribution of wealth in the UK, with the panel finding “deep-seated and systematic differences in economic outcomes” between and within social groups.
The report contains startling statistics about the growing gaps in earning and income inequality and their scale compared with other developed nations. It also shows a persistent gender gap, with women being on the whole better qualified than men up to the age of 44, but with a median hourly pay of 21% less than men. It points to continuing ethnic inequalities, finding that Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslim men and Black African Christian men are paid 13-21% lower than White British Christian men with the same job and qualifications. And it reveals that the richest 10% of UK population has more than 100 times the total household wealth of the poorest 10%.
Why does all this matter? Mandelson qualified his statement by saying Labour was relaxed about the rich “as long as they pay their taxes”. But the figures in the NEP report debunk the myth of ‘trickle-down economics’: the idea that if those at the top of the pile become ‘filthy rich’ those further down will also reap the benefits. Instead what it shows is that as the rich become richer, the wealth remains largely at the top and the rungs on the social ladder move further apart.
This has important consequences for society. In their 2009 book The Spirit Level (out this month in paperback) authors Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have made a compelling case that more equal societies fare better than more unequal ones. Across a wide variety of indicators of social wellbeing including physical and mental health, obesity, violent crime rates and teenage births, they show that, once a country has reached the level of GDP which lifts it out of poverty, what matters is not how much wealth there is in that country but how it is distributed.
There is a clear parallel with the depletion of our environmental resources. Just as in the UK we see wealth concentrated in a small section of society, so on a global level the rich use far more than their fair share of available environmental resources such as carbon, water, and food. We are only beginning to start thinking – largely through the climate debate – what the long-term implications of that unfair distribution might be, and how that will impact on all of us.
At Copenhagen this theme was taken up by the G77 nations. But once again we saw world leaders seemingly ‘intensely relaxed’ about attaching more importance to protecting their national economies than the global need to reduce carbon emissions dramatically, for the benefit of all.
If we are to start thinking about truly sustainable development, where the needs of the present are met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, then we need to start taking these issues of distribution more seriously. We need to let the idea of trickle-down economics go for good. That requires a level of bravery and leadership that we haven’t seen in our politicians for many decades. And more importantly support from an enlightened public. Redistribution has fallen out of favour in recent decades - the question is how we’re going to bring it back?
How to build sustainability into a brand
Sally Uren, January 21st 2010, Business, Leadership
Mainstream brands are currently busy showing off their sustainability credentials. From Cadbury’s Dairy Milk - now 100% Fairtrade - to Persil’s Small and Mighty, using less packaging, less water, less energy - mainstream brands are having sustainability makeovers.
Is this just marketing gone mad? A fad? A cynical attempt to grab a new bit of market share? No, no, and sort of – in that order. The market share bit is partly true, but in most cases, from Cadbury to Unilever to M&S, there’s little cynicism involved – this is simply an evolution of their sustainability strategies. It’s not enough to have shiny policies; leadership today is pushing the sustainability promise into the brand.
And there are at least three reasons why using brands to visibly demonstrate sustainability commitments makes good business sense.
Firstly, as public awareness and interest in the sustainability agenda grows, there is the potential to cement existing consumer relationships, and build new ones, using social and environmental issues as communication channels (that’s the market share bit).
Secondly, by doing the work to understand the sustainability impacts of a product, ways of reducing those impacts - and often saving money - become apparent.
Then, thirdly, there’s the bit about securing future supplies of raw materials: doing the right thing in terms of sourcing isn’t simply about a fair wage, it’s also about ensuring long-term continuity of supply.
So what does an authentic voice on social and environmental issues look like? How can you tell if a brand is serious about sustainability?
Of critical importance is the need to demonstrate, visibly, that taking sustainability seriously doesn’t mean business as usual. There needs to be evidence that as a result of confronting sustainability head-on, some things have changed, such as taking some products - the sustainability villains - off the shelves. Both B&Q and John Lewis in the UK have stopped selling patio heaters – which lets face it, aren’t part of a sustainable future (a jumper will always be the low-carbon option).
Honesty is also important. Communicating the challenges and dilemmas associated with a journey to greater sustainability helps build credibility. Never believe the brand or business that claims overnight sustainability, it just isn’t possible. Businesses such as Exxon, which have had a more recent conversion to sustainability, need to be very honest about the huge challenges they face in switching from an inherently unsustainable business model (oil is running out, right?) to one with renewable technologies at its heart.
Finally, there need to be absolute targets for reductions in key impact areas, from water, to carbon, to waste. Normalised targets - units of carbon emitted per area occupied, for example - as the sole measure of a brand’s performance have had their day. These clever numbers all too easily communicate efficiency improvements, but can disguise an increase in the brand’s overall footprint. And the argument that ‘we’re a growing business’ doesn’t wash. That’s the whole point – we absolutely have to decouple economic growth from environmental impact if we are going to get close to the 80-90% reduction in carbon emissions the developed world needs to achieve by 2050.
We are currently in the middle of a market transformation, from niche and green to mainstream. That’s not to say the niche and the green are not important, they are, and their very existence has paved the way for the big players to engage with the sustainability agenda. But niche and green won’t deliver the scale of the change we need to see. Giving mainstream brands serious sustainability makeovers just might.
An edited version of this article appeared in the Guardian’s Sustainable Business section.
Corporate sustainability holds its value in the recession
David Bent, January 7th 2010, Business, Leadership
Despite what the Financial Times has called "the Great Recession" corporate sustainability is holding its own. The downturn has hit the UK harder than any since 1930s but companies are still finding sustainability is a source of cost savings, innovation, motivation and long-term advantage.
This time last year people were predicting the decline of corporate sustainability, saying the recession would force everyone to show their true colours: consumers would stop buying 'ethical' and companies would get rid of the PR fluff, including all this sustainability nonsense.
At Forum for the Future we were also concerned, so we created some scenarios that outlined lots of possibilities, from 'Chinese-American globalisation', through 'A quick return' to 'Into depression'. We focused our April Business Network event on the recession, with a set of scenarios and some techniques to keep sustainability relevant and fight off budget cuts.
Eight months on we know it has been a difficult time for pretty much all the organisations we work with in business and the public sector - "the worst year in my professional career" as one CEO put it to us.
But the vast majority of our partners have kept going on sustainability. There have been budget cuts, but mostly only in proportion to cuts around the rest of the business. The evidence so far is that corporate sustainability is holding its own in the recession. Why?
Back in April we proposed four ways a sustainable approach can help your business in a recession: it identifies direct cost savings; it helps innovate products and services which defend your revenue; it motivates your people; and it captures long-term advantage.
Other people have come up with very similar lists (see Andrew Winston's short book Green Recovery, The Economist's rather churlish article, and the excellent Sloan Review special report on The Business of Sustainability).
We don't know of any good quantitative research, but the anecdotal evidence is that sustainability does help companies in a recession. Some of our partners have pushed ahead with projects aimed at reducing energy use (which also helps prepare for the Carbon Reduction Commitment). One partner told us they'd seen five years' worth of innovation this year, especially in helping customers reduce their spending. We can see IBM trying to capture long-term advantage through all that “Smarter Planet” advertising.
On top of this, it's likely that companies would have retreated much more on sustainability three years ago. The resilience of corporate sustainability in the recession is evidence that increasingly they understand what it can do for them, and they are embedding and integrating it into their organisations.
But we're not out of the woods yet. Here at the Forum, we've been using our recession scenarios to track developments each month. The summary is that parts of the world have growth, but there is great uncertainty, with most predictions pointing to a long, slow climb at best. Commodity prices, like oil, are high for a struggling global economy, and this shows that the underlying infrastructure bottlenecks are still there (see our report on Acting Now for more). Households and banks are going to take a while to rebuild their balance sheets. Governments are walking a delicate tightrope; keeping spending going long-enough to maintain growth but proving they are serious about tackling deficits. There is a real risk of a ‘double-dip recession’.
The year ahead will still be difficult for companies, and we will all have to adjust to a world that is different from 2007. But the fundamental reasons why sustainability has risen up the corporate agenda remain: the real impacts of an unsustainable world are being felt, with the prospect of more to come. The challenges and opportunities of sustainability will still be important for companies in the years to come.
Scaling the summit of sustainability
Steven Bland, December 21st 2009, General, Leadership
I’ve debated with Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband, surveyed 13,000 people at a national charity about their views on sustainability, and spent three exhausting days at the Leadership Trust in Ross-on-Wye, all in one action-packed first ‘term’ on Forum for the Future’s Masters in Leadership for Sustainable Development
I’ve written close to 20,000 words, felt useless and useful in equal measure, role-played being a local councillor, given a class on energy and climate change to a group of Year 9 schoolchildren, and immersed myself in the world of sustainability: from social capital, to the Natural Step, to carbon markets and green economics.
Staff at the Forum describe us as future ‘change agents’. It’s an alluring yet daunting phrase. In our first week we were presented with the image of a snow-capped mountain: ours to climb this year. This was the goal of our journey - a sustainability vantage point from which we could survey the state of the planet and its people and contribute to creating a world of increased social and environmental prosperity, a ‘good’ world, not just a less bad one.
My current vantage point is a long way off that sustainability mountain (I reckon there’s been a bit of altitude sickness, and there’s more to come). I’m currently well below the tree line… - in fact I’m selling trees. Are Christmas trees sustainable, I ask myself, as I wrap them in plastic netting which I fear could end up in the stomach of some unfortunate seabird.
Truly understanding the sustainability of the humble Christmas tree has less to do with netting and more about the systems with which the tree interacted and was a part. What effect did growing have on local ecological systems? Were the people who trimmed them into shape paid a living wage? And how did this impact on local societies? The Forum has instilled in me the importance of systems thinking which involves seeing the forest, in spite of the trees. Creating a more just and prosperous future will require us to change the way we think fundamentally.
In these first few months I’ve seen glimpses of a sustainable future. For example, district heating through Combined Heat and Power plants in Birmingham where efficiency is 85% compared to traditional power stations’ frankly pathetic 35%. I’ve seen the value of local strategic partnerships bringing businesses, politicians and community groups together to create shared visions of prosperous, low-carbon futures.
It’s been a personal journey too. At Birmingham City Council, as I sat wondering what I should be doing and puzzled over how to integrate into the team during my four-week placement, I was beset by a lack of imagination, inspiration and drive. I was better prepared to deal with this because of our seminars on the importance of self-reflection and self-learning.
The course’s focus on self-directed learning is vital, but challenging! It’s a far cry from university, and it leads to moments of self-doubt about whether I’m making the most of the opportunities being placed in front of me. The Forum leaves doors ajar - we have to push on the ones we want, and decide how to walk through them. Sometimes it’s not very clear or obvious how to do that!
Throughout it all, lecturers have stressed the importance of optimism.
The catastrophic and negative portrayals of the environmental movement have desensitised people to many environmental issues. The number of people who deny that human activity causes climate change is growing, not diminishing. How do we create a positive vision of the future, whilst convincing people of the scale and urgency of the problem at hand? This is a key question we’ve been battling with in the past few months on our first two of five placements this year: in the NGO sector and in local government.
What’s been the hardest? Bridging that gap between those of us who are climbing that mountain, and many others I meet who haven’t even heard of the mountain, never mind seen it. The reality is the core messages and realities of sustainable development are often lost in a sea of ‘greenwash’ and climate-change frenzy. “I’m doing a course in Leadership for Sustainable Development” I say, excitedly, yet with trepidation. The response? Blank faces, or an uncertain “Oh, that’s cool”, or the most terrifying: “What’s sustainable development?!” Explaining that one succinctly, whilst staying positive, has been more difficult than I expected!
There’s a lot more to come on this journey. I’m off to the Department for Energy and Climate Change next month and am both apprehensive and excited about a placement with big business, a corporation or bank after that. The attitude to take on this course is ‘no-holds-barred’ - seeing even difficult challenges as a welcome contribution to personal development and learning.
The course is a great melting point of young optimism, drive and differing opinions. My fellow students include scientists, philosophers, sociologists and vegans, people passionate about social media, sustainable fashion or activism, all united by one common aspiration: to get out there and do something that creates true ‘added value’ for people and the environment, and to ‘reverse the perverse’ in our economic and social systems.
The best thing so far? The fun. Twelve people trekking up that mountain together, exploring, learning, and creating, together with expert facilitators and lecturers.
Steven Bland is a student on Forum for the Future’s Masters course in Leadership for Sustainable Development
Ethopia’s take on carbon tax funding might win in Copenhagen
Jonathon Porritt, December 16th 2009, Climate change, Finance, International, Leadership
Everyone but everyone out there in Copenhagen today agrees that a precondition of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases is to ‘get a realistic price on every tonne of CO2 just as soon as possible’.
Nick Stern’s report on the Economics of Climate Change rammed home this point so effectively that some misguided economists would now have us believe that’s all we need to do. Not so.
But it’s true that nothing much will happen without it.
Listen to Jonathon's phonecast of this blog
Many people (including most EU Heads of State) still think the fastest route to getting a realistic price for CO2 is to create a global trading scheme – like the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme, scaled-up, or the proposed ‘Cap-and-Trade’ scheme in the US.
But more and more people are now losing confidence in the trading route. Those with long memories recall that it was only included in the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 as a way of keeping the Americans on board, with most EU countries actually feeling very queasy about it at the time. Ironically, when the Americans subsequently pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol, the EU was left holding the trading baby! Twelve years on, it still looks like a pretty sick little baby.
Many economists have long been of the opinion that it would make a lot more sense to tax carbon, levying a charge on the carbon content of all energy sources upstream at the point where they enter the supply chain. And more and more business leaders are coming to that same conclusion – on the grounds that they would then know what the cost of carbon would be over time, ratcheting up from a low base line to ‘a realistic’ level (i.e. behaviour-changing and innovation-driving!). This would be brought forward as soon as economies could cope.
Such tax would simultaneously generate a shed load of revenue, some of which could then be used to provide the funding required for developing countries.
In that regard, we know one thing for sure: in the current economic crisis, rich world countries are not going to be able to find big enough sums to provide the poor world with what they now need. As the EU Summit on Funding so clearly demonstrated last week – the funds just aren’t there.
So we need some new sources of funding. The current favourite in Copenhagen, being advanced by Ethiopia (on behalf of African nations) and warmly supported by Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy, is a mixture of taxes on aviation, shipping and financial transactions (the so-called Tobin Tax) – “get the bloody banks to pay for dealing with climate change”, as the populists put it!
Forgive the pun, but this one could just fly! If Gordon’s on board (as a man who refused to countenance any discussion about the Tobin Tax over the last 12 years) then anything could happen. And the truth of it is that there isn’t any alternative anyway, so we might as well bite the bullet and get on with it.
Time to renew fight against nuclear distractions
Jonathon Porritt, December 8th 2009, Climate change, Forum founders, General, Leadership
It was Teddy Goldsmith’s “Memorial Celebration” on Tuesday last week.
I think everyone thought it was extraordinarily important to have a chance to think back over the life’s work of this extraordinary man. From the mid-1960s onwards, he was often the first to raise big sustainability issues, to pursue them ferociously through the pages of The Ecologist (established in 1969 and “virtualised” 40 years later in 2009), and to keep confronting people with the often uncomfortable logic of what it means to fashion genuinely sustainable lives for an ever-expanding number of human beings on an ever-shrinking planet.
Sadly, I didn’t see much of Teddy in his last few years. But he was often present in my thinking about different issues, particularly in terms of his views on population, economic growth, agriculture, GM and so on. And nowhere more powerfully than in the renewed debate about the potential role of nuclear power in a more sustainable world.
Right now, those who still feel that nuclear power has no role to play in a genuinely sustainable world are completely downcast at having to fight those same old battles all over again – this time with the added problem of a growing number of serious environmentalists who’ve thrown in their lot (holding their noses as they go) with the nuclear option.
It has to be said that there’s no enthusiasm for the fight. How could there be? And at the moment, there’s no clear sense of where the leadership is going to come from.
More than ever, we’re going to miss that utterly uncompromising, forensic focus that Teddy brought to bear on the nuclear industry – especially in terms of Windscale/Sellafield, Dounreay, Sizewell and so on.
Without Teddy, who is going to rub people’s noses in the continuing scandal of nuclear waste mismanagement, and remind people that this government promised time after time that there would be no expansion of nuclear power in this country until it had sorted out the problems of nuclear waste?
Who is going to hold to account politicians and industry leaders for whom secrecy remains the default mindset?
Who is going to expose the near-fraudulent accounting practices endemic within the nuclear industry that continue to blind people to the true economic costs and penalties involved in nuclear power?
Who is going to interrogate the philosophical and moral implications of one generation imposing on the next a set of problems and security hazards for which they themselves have absolutely no solution?
And who is going to take on those sincere but utterly misguided environmentalists who’ve “gone nuclear” over the last few years because they feel there’s no alternative?
Sustainable development activists can’t afford to be absolutist about new technology developments. When the facts change, we should indeed change our minds. Even in the Green Party (after very lively discussions with Teddy himself!), I argued that we should be open to the theoretical possibility that evolved nuclear technologies, at some point in the future, might have a contribution to make to a genuinely sustainable energy mix.
And who can tell what lies ahead in that regard. Once issues regarding cost, public subsidy, waste, decommissioning, proliferation, vulnerability to terrorism and availability of uranium have all been addressed and sorted, maybe that day will dawn.
But it hasn’t dawned yet. And there’s nothing in the latest reactor designs currently under consideration that tells me that it’s going to dawn any time soon.
As Teddy would be pointing out right now, by the time that day does dawn, it will almost certainly be too late anyway. And we will have wasted all that time and all that money fixated on our nuclear fantasies, and failing to do the obvious sustainable stuff on efficiency and renewables.
So I don’t doubt that those still opposed to the nuclear option will be drawing down on Teddy’s astonishing life work, as they reluctantly pick up their cudgels all over again.
Image copyright information:
Credit: Terry Kettlewell /Shutterstock
The Standing of Sustainable Development in Government
Jonathon Porritt, November 10th 2009, Forum founders, General, Leadership, Public Sector
When I was still Chair of the Sustainable Development Commission, I was hoping to produce a snapshot of just how deep sustainable development had penetrated into the workings of government – since the election of the Labour Government in 1997, the establishment of the Sustainable Development Commission in 2000, and the issuing of the Sustainable Development Strategy, ‘Securing the Future’. As it happens, it didn’t get done. Which has allowed me a few extra months to reflect in less frenetic circumstances.
And that’s been helpful! I have to admit, I was feeling a bit grumpy back in July. There’s only so much head banging one can do before brain damage sets in! And so much of what the Sustainable Development Commission does is going on behind the scenes – received and acted on, for example, by bodies like the Environmental Audit Committee, the Office of Government Commerce, individual departments and so on.
And if one gets really disciplined about both sides of the balance sheet (the pluses and the minuses), the overall picture on the standing of sustainable development question is actually “not half bad” – and I’m constantly struck by just how impressed people from other countries are at the ‘sustainable development architecture’ that’s been created here in the UK, including the Sustainable Development Commission itself.
But there still remains something of a mystery here, despite all the good things, it’s demonstrably clear to me that not enough has changed on the ground. Plenty of good process but not enough good outcomes (and quite a few really bad outcomes!)
That’s the mystery I’ve tried to unravel in this new Report, unimaginatively entitled The Standing of Sustainable Development in Government. Not an all-singing, all-dancing retrospective, and certainly not a completely dispassionate study. But useful for all that, I hope.
Time for a retail revolution
Dan Crossley, October 28th 2009, Climate change, General, Leadership, Retail
When you see the chief executives of five world-famous companies debating how to make the broader retail sector more sustainable, you realise a quiet revolution is underway.
The senior figures in question were the bosses of Tesco, Coca Cola, Unilever, SC Johnson and Reckitt Benckiser, responsible for combined sales of well in excess of £100 billion. The stage was the Sustainable Consumption Institute event –‘Consumers: the key to a low carbon world’ – held at the Royal Society in London this month.
These leaders acknowledged the major role their companies can play in helping their customers to lead more sustainable lives. They also talked about their responsibility to lead and to educate consumers – quite a change from the “we only do what consumers tell us” rhetoric that we might have heard in the past.
Sir Terry Leahy, Tesco’s chief executive, used the event to announce bold new climate change ambitions for the world’s third largest retailer.
Three commitments particularly caught my eye.
Firstly, Tesco will become a zero carbon business by 2050 (at the latest) – an aspiration that we would encourage others to strive for (obviously the earlier the better).
Secondly, it will reduce the carbon impact of the products in its supply chain by 30% by 2020 – meaning it will have to collaborate much more closely with key suppliers.
And thirdly, the retailer will work with consumers to help them move towards zero carbon homes – a big potential prize.
We have to rewind to early 2007 to see Tesco’s first big announcements on climate change – at the ‘Green Grocer’ event, hosted by Forum for the Future. It was there that Sir Terry first talked about the need for a new revolution in green consumption and pledged to set up the Sustainable Consumption Institute.
It was one of a flurry of bold retailer announcements on sustainability at the time, including Marks & Spencer’s Plan A and Wal-Mart’s Sustainability 360.
Since then many of our leading retailers, including Tesco, have taken some fantastic steps, particularly on climate change. In the grand scheme of things though, it’s been more of a rumble, than the revolution we really need.
Sir Terry reiterated the rationale for a revolution in green consumption at the recent event: “For Tesco [it]… is a fantastic opportunity: once and for all to break the link between consumption and emissions, and in doing so to satisfy a new consumer need, and grow our business.”
Tesco deserves praise for raising the bar, as the need for action is growing ever more urgent. That’s why we’ll be pushing our retail and branded manufacturing partners hard next year on enabling, informing and encouraging consumers to make sustainable purchasing decisions. We need more bold ambitions and – critically - we need to see them realised, in order to achieve a real green retail revolution.
NGOs, business and government
Jonathon Porritt, July 9th 2009, International, Leadership
I’ve just finished reading Oxfam’s new report on climate change and poverty, (“Suffering the Science”), prepared especially for the G8 meeting now underway in Italy. Gloomy, but hugely powerful stuff:
“Climate change’s most savage impact on humanity in the near future is likely to be in the increase in hunger. The countries with existing problems in feeding their people are those most at risk from climate change. Millions of farmers will have to give up traditional crops as they experience changes in the seasons that they and their ancestors have depended on. Climate-related hunger may become the defining human tragedy of this century”.
It’s not all doom and gloom. The report replays a lot of Oxfam’s excellent proposals on sustainable agriculture, with a new emphasis on adaptation to climate change. There’s just so much that could be happening right now.
Coming hot on the heels of the equally impactful report from the Global Humanitarian Forum (“The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis”), it’s becoming clearer and clearer that the development/poverty/equity end of the spectrum of NGOs involved in this area is playing a massive part in civil society’s efforts to spur politicians on.
And that brought to mind, yet again, my old friend Richard Sandbrook – a former Director of the International Institute for Environment and Development, and Trustee of both Forum for the Future and The Eden Project for many years before his untimely death. He’s been in my thoughts a lot lately (having just given the second Richard Sandbrook Memorial Lecture a couple of weeks ago), wondering how he would be responding to the growing levels of activity in the run up to the Copenhagen Conference.
Although Richard was himself an NGO-man through and through, he spent a disproportionate amount of time giving them a very hard time for their negativity, territoriality and all-round lack of creativity in bringing forward new ideas to accelerate the solutions agenda – particularly as regards their inability to work properly with business.
Most NGOs took it all in good heart (“don’t worry, it’s just Richard off on another bout of NGO-bashing”), but others used to get quite grumpy about it, even accusing him of having ‘sold out’ to big corporates like Rio Tinto, big forestry companies and so on.
Forum for the Future gets more than its fair share of the ‘selling out’ critique, and we just put up with that as part and parcel of operating in this high risk area. But we too were a bit mystified at Richard’s anti-NGO tirades.
And I wonder if he would still be taking that line today? So many NGOs now work in one way or another with the private sector, including quite radical NGOs like the Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade. Even Oxfam is deepening its relationship with some of the biggest companies in the world.
And on a macro-scale, in terms of the balance between government, business and civil society, as agents of change in their respective spheres, I would also argue that the continuing failure of governments to drive a completely different model of wealth creation leaves even the most progressive companies struggling to do much more than mitigate the worst effects of business-as-usual economic growth.
Which means, logically, that the onus is even more on NGOs (as embodiments of civil society) to make it possible for governments to do what they are absolutely going to have to do – sooner or later.
So I ended up using my Memorial Lecture to suggest that Richard’s deep frustration with NGOs might, by now, have moved into a rather different place. But it would, no doubt, have been equally challenging!
Watch videos of the lecture:
Clip 1 - introduction to the lecture, includes some compelling thoughts on climate change.
Clip 2 - the case for optimism, contrasted against adopting a 'war footing' or James Lovelock fatalism in dealing with climate change and resource scarcity.
Clip 3 - anger and other psychological reactions to climate change. (less good quality - turn sound up or listen on headphones).
Retailers pressing ahead with green agenda despite recession
Tom Berry, September 22nd 2008, Leadership, Retail
Our new report ‘Retail Leadership’, released today, shows how supermarkets and other major retailers are pressing ahead with green business practices despite the threat of recession.
Retailers have a vital role to play in building a sustainable, low-carbon economy. They can drive far-reaching change up and down their supply chains, supporting local economic development and helping suppliers operate in ways which have less impact on the environment and do more to benefit communities. They can also help hundreds of millions of customers to make straightforward, affordable and more sustainable choices.
Eco-efficiencies – making savings by reducing energy use, packaging and waste – directly support the cost-cutting which retailers and consumers look for in a downturn. By sharing lorries to make more efficient deliveries Tesco and Unilever have saved more than half a million “empty” miles.
Consumers’ growing demands for greener, healthier, more ethical products have made them a critical part of brand positioning and a driver for new product and service innovations. Sainsbury’s has seen a 60% rise in sales of higher-welfare chicken since 2007 and is adding lines to meet growing demand. In the Kingfisher Group, which sponsored the report, Castorama has rolled out more than 2,000 “eco-products”.
And recession or not, in the long term successful retailers will be those who have robust strategies in place to deal with the rising cost of oil and commodities, who support suppliers in drought-prone and water-scarce areas, and who work to make sustainable products more available and affordable to their customers. We hope this report will help all retail businesses be part of that change.
Registered charity number 1040519