Reflection on "What the Green Movement Got Wrong"

By Wayne Visser

Last night, the UK’s Channel 4 showed a documentary called ‘What the Green Movement Got Wrong’. In some ways, it reminded me of The Apprentice – designed to spark conflict and generate publicity, but having very little to do with inconvenient reality. And of course, it succeeded. The live debate that followed drew indignant responses from the likes of Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and George Monbiot. And while I shared some of their frustration, I am rather less inclined to trash the show.

The fact of the matter is that it raised some important questions about the ‘greens’ (although only the media still uses such an outdated label). Do they rely more on ideology and emotions than science and economics? Have they been right in their belligerent opposition to nuclear and NGOs? Is their distrust in corporations and new technology really justified? Do they slip into the trap of caring more about ‘green things’ than people, especially poor people in developing countries?

Well, first we have to ask, who are ‘they’? The documentary lumped these mysterious ‘greens’ into one amorphous mass, creating the impression that it is a cogent and unified movement. Paul Hawken, in Blessed Unrest, estimates that there are over 2 million organisations around the world working on issues of social justice and environmental sustainability. What are the chances that they agree on anything, let alone the contentious issues of nuclear energy and GMOs?

The truth is that every movement, including sustainability and responsibility, has the full spectrum of players, from conservatives and Luddites to liberals and techno-optimists. There are those who believe that business and the market are the yellow brick road to utopia, and those who believe that only government policy can take us ‘over the rainbow’. There are pro-nuke and anti-nuke, pro-GMO and anti-GMO and all sorts of liquorice flavours in between.

Leaving the quality of the documentary aside (it was one-sided and contained various factual errors), the freedom to debate the issues is critical. If there’s one thing that drives me mad, it’s the demonization of anyone who happens to disagree with the crowd – and let’s be honest, the sustainability and responsibility ‘crowd’ does suffer from group-think mentality on many issues. Ideology, preconceived ideas and entrenched positions are stronger than most will admit.

My point is that debate is good. Dialogue is even better, but that requires listening, rather than defending dug-in bunker-mentality views. Dialogue is never going to happen in the bright lights of entertainment TV. But we do have a chance now, in the aftermath, to dialogue. The question is, are we mature enough to do so. When last did you change your mind on a key sustainability or justice issue? Are we prepared to practice what we preach about stakeholder engagement?

It was clear that Channel 4 had no intention of being either fair or transparent. As Craig Bennett from Friends of the Earth pointed out during the live debate, they requested that they be interviewed so as to include their views in the documentary, but Channel 4 refused. No surprise there. Channel 4 is not about balanced programming, it is about poking the hornet’s nest to boost viewers and ratings; a sort of documentary version of Jerry Springer if you like.

In the final analysis, the documentary and the debate that followed belong to the last century. The world – and the sustainability and responsibility movement – has long since moved on from simplistic black or white, green or red, market or state, pro or anti thinking. We are in the era of complexity, of hybrid technologies and cross-sector partnerships, of multi-level governance and multi-stage CSR. We must resist the tabloid-style return to cardboard caricatures and melodramatic mudslinging.

The State of CSR in Malaysia: A Supply Chain Time Bomb?

By Wayne Visser

It was an interesting time to be in Kuala Lumpur, with the Greenpeace Kit-Kat campaign against Nestle having just gone viral. (Greenpeace accused Nestle of endangering orang-utans through deforestation caused by its irresponsible palm oil supply chain in Indonesia. See Nestle's response). While the campaign was specifically targeted at a Nestle supplier in Indonesia, Malaysia is also a major world source of palm oil and it clearly got the attention of large plantation companies like Sime Darby, a Malaysian company which supplies nearly 10% of the world market.

Fortunately for them, according to an interview I did with their Chief Sustainability Officer, Puvan Selvanathan, they are ahead of the curve, with some plantations already certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and the rest scheduled for certification by 2011/2012 (whereas Unilever and Nestle are only committing to have fully converted supplies by 2015). Beyond the specific companies involved, however, the Greenpeace-Nestle palm oil debacle highlights the increasingly important role of sector-based codes and social media as new mechanisms for corporate governance and stakeholder accountability.

The RSPO is part of the new generation of multi-stakeholder CSR codes, which have far more credibility than their industry-led predecessors (like Responsible Care). It still has its problems – especially the ability for plantations to offset carbon rather than actually convert to sustainable practices, and a certification bottleneck that seems to be slowing things down – but it is part of the new web of CSR governance mechanisms that are needed to take responsible behaviour to scale. It will only work, however, when companies like Nestle, Carrefour and Unilever ‘choice edit’ on behalf of consumers, so that unsustainable palm oil is phased out completely.

As far as social media goes, the Greenpeace-Nestle campaign is set to become a classic CSR case study. One estimate calculates that within 4 days the Greenpeace report and shock-video may have reached half a million people through social media like Twitter and Facebook. This viral effect was seemingly boosted by Nestle’s attempt on its Facebook page to censor comments made by its critics. The fact that Nestle took swift action by dropping the accused Indonesian supplier and that their hands are effective tied by a lack of available sustainable palm oil has done little to quell the angry reactions of online activists.

A related but different issue that I became aware of during my time in KL, through an interview with Matthias Gerber, is that most of the world’s peat forests are in Indonesia and Malaysia. These underground forests are a colossal carbon sink asset for the world and pose a significant climate change threat, unless they are urgently protected. Instead, intensive farming and deforestation is lowering the water table, drying out these organic soils (comprised mainly of undecayed leaves) and resulting in peat forest fires, which release massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere and are hard to put out once they begin.

As far as explicit CSR goes, according to CSR Asia research in 2008, Malaysia is marginally ahead of Singapore and the Philippines, but behind Hong Kong. My observation (informed by various conversations, interviews and the CSR workshop I conducted at the invitation of FORS) was that strategic, embedded CSR is still limited to very few large companies, such as those involved in the local UN Global Compact network. The progressive role of the government on CSR, however, may yet pay dividends. This includes, for example, presidential awards for CSR, the creation of an Energy, Green Technology and Water Ministry and the implementation of a Green Buildings Index.

There is even talk of impending reforms to company law, to redefine corporate purpose in terms of meeting stakeholder needs, rather than continuing to follow the global status quo of shareholder fiduciary duty. If it was any other country, I’d take this with a pinch of salt, but this is Malaysia, which dared to defy the IMF hegemony after the Asian financial crisis. If there is any government bold enough to challenge shareholder-driven capitalism, it may just be Malaysia.

I, for one, hope they have the courage to do so, because until we reduce the stranglehold that shareholders and financial speculators have over our companies and markets, it will always be like trying to sail against a gale that is blowing in the opposite direction, using only a handkerchief – namely CSR - as a sail. The trade winds of the market will always blow, but rather than tinkering with the sails, we need a new kind of vessel – a new model of sustainable and responsible business – that can not only navigate through the tempest, but also sail for calmer waters, where long term thinking is possible and preferable.

Video Blog: Puvan Selvanathan on Sustainable Palm Oil

Puvan Selvanathan is Chief Sustainability Officer for Sime Darby, a Malaysian company that supplies 8-10% of the world's palm oil. In this interview with Dr Wayne Visser, Director of CSR International, which was conducted in Kuala Lumpur shortly after the release of Greenpeace's report condemning Nestle's practices on palm oil, Mr Selvanathan reflects on the campaign and its implications for the industry.

Obama moves beyond climate spin

"It's a little bit funny, this feeling inside" ... We are so used to being disappointed by politicians that the world seems a little out of joint when they actually meet or exceed our expectations.

Yesterday, in what he described as "first steps", Obama directed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reconsider the Bush administration's denial of a 2007 request by California and 13 other states to implement strict new limits on tailpipe emissions that contribute to global warming. He also directed the Department of Transportation to follow through on Congressional legislation to raise existing fuel economy standards on new cars and lorries by 40 percent beginning in 2011.

Admittedly, it is still very much the honeymoon period for Obama, and every president has their 100-day plan to impress. Even so, Obama's choice to act swiftly on climate change is heartening. A number of things seem significant about his announcement:

1. Obama has turned environmental NGOs into his allies - he practically had them queing up to sing his praises, from the Environmental Defense Fund and the Pew Center on Climate Change to Greenpeace.
   
2. Obama has cross the party divide and made the environmentally progressive Californian governer Schwarzenegger into an ally as well, which bodes well for the future.
3. Obama has virtually accused his predecessor (and the oil and motor industry lobby) of climate change denial, saying "my administration will not deny facts; we will be guided by them".
4. And finally, Obama has made a bold declaration that "America is ready to lead" on climate change. Given their current position as laggards, they will have to cover a huge amount of ground in the coming 12 months to give that statement any substance.

The months and years ahead - especially Obama's promise to introduce a cap-and-trade system and the world's hope that the US will play a productive role in reaching a post-Kyoto deal - will give us plenty of opportunity to test (and no doubt criticise) Obama's commitment. But for now, I think we should relish the winds of change blowing - they don't come too often.