Video Blog: Signposts to Sustainability

This is a montage of extracts from interviews conducted by Dr Wayne Visser, Senior Associate, Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership, for the Cambridge Top 50 Sustainability Books Project. Included are short clips by Polly Courtice, Muhammad Yunus, Joseph Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs, George Monbiot, Elizabeth Economy and Hunter Lovins.



The Top 50 Sustainability Books is now available from CPSL, Greenleaf Publishing and online bookstores. For more information about the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership or the Cambridge Top 50 Sustainability Books Project, see www.cpsl.cam.ac.uk or email info@cpsl.cam.ac.uk.

CSR or another label: Who cares?

Some people get very excited about what label you use to describe the role of business in society. Should it be corporate socialresponsibility, or just corporate responsibility, or maybe business (social) responsibility? What about corporate citizenship or corporate accountability? Maybe sustainable development or corporate sustainability or just sustainability? Social enterprise or sustainable business? On and on the debate rages … or rather, whimpers.

As someone who is about to launch a new variation - corporate sustainability & responsibility or CSR 2.0 - of an old label - corporate social responsibility or just plain CSR - I feel I should make my position clear on the battle of the labels. To borrow from Gone With the Wind, “Quite frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn!” Which is not to say that labels don’t tell us something. They can be quite instructive.

For example, corporate social responsibility indicates the strong philanthropic roots of CSR, going back to the late 1800s, with benefactors like Rockerfeller and Cadbury giving business responsibility a distinctly social flavour. On the other hand, corporate sustainability, which grew out of the Rio Earth Summit, still struggles to shake off its environmental tinge, despite John Elkington’s best efforts at rebranding it as a “triple bottom line”.

Likewise, my concept of CSR 2.0 is trying to say something - notably that the old CSR as philanthropy, public relations, voluntary action and incremental improvement is no longer adequate (if ever it was) to the challenges the world faces, be they persistant poverty, climate change or rampant corruption. The old version - 1.0 - is obselete, and the new version - 2.0 - is still in the “beta testing phase”, to use Web 2.0 jargon.

Another thing I’m trying to signal by rebranding CSR as Corporate Sustainability & Responsibility is that we should concede that there are only really two label-games in town - corporate responsibility and corporate sustainability. You only need to look at companies’ non-financial reports to see this. So rather than keep up the ding-dong battle for who’s best, why not simply combine the two, and keep the acronym CSR, which slips easily off the tongue.

That’s the kind of transformative and integrated CSR we’re aiming for at CSR International. But far more important than the label are the principles behind the name. Is business’s response simply more tinkering at the edges, or does it create scalable solutions to our global challenges? Is business really listening to its stakeholders, or do they get short shrift when the economic going gets tough?

So pick whatever label you most fancy, or none at all if you like. But promise me that whatever your choice, you will not let companies hide behind the label and pretend that a few well-meaning donations, or marginal improvements in energy efficiency, or meeting minimum labour conditions makes them a serious part of the solution. As Muhammad Yunus said to me in an interview last year, that doesn’t give them “the right to be remembered”.

He went on to say that it is only when we change the world - when we change people’s lives for the better - that we have a right to put our signature on this planet. These are the sort of values, principles and results by which any CSR or alternative label should be judged. I only hope that in 10 years time, CSR 2.0 will have lived up to this challenge and give us all the right to speak with confidence about the contribution of CSR, rather than have to apologise for its continued failure.

CSR/sustainability experts on hope and 2009 prospects

Last night I was at the Science Museum in London attending the 20th Anniversary alumni celebrations of the University of Cambridge Programme for Industry (CPI - where I am a Senior Associate and was formerly Research Director).

The evening included an introductory speech by Director, Polly Courtice. Then we showed a little film (on a BIG Imax screen). The film included extracts from interviews I conducted with Joseph Stiglitz, George Monbiot, Hunter Lovins, Elizabeth Economy, Mohammad Yunus and Jeffrey Sachs. These interviews are the basis of two books that I am writing, which will be published in 2009.

Following the film was a panel discussion comprising John Elkington (Founder, SustainAbility and Volans Ventures), Emma Howard-Boyd (Director, Juipiter Asset Management), Doug Parr (Chief Scientist, Greenpeace UK) and Jonathon Porritt (Founder, Forum for the Future). They were asked to speak about what made them hopeful about the future.

John was placing his bets on social entrepreneurs, Emma commented on substantial growth in SRI in the past year (suggesting that it may be up to 20% of all investments by 2015 if memory serves), Doug cited victories in stalling a new UK nuclear plant and airport runway and Jonathon was putting his faith in a grassroots upswell (and his hopes for Barack Obama).

I would be lying if I said it was an entirely upbeat discussion. John sees the next 7 or 8 years of recession being very bleak and creating serious (and painful) discontinuities, Doug despairs over multilateral policy processes like Poznan and Jonathon thinks the scope for business to make serious progress in the current policy climate is extremely limited.

What all seemed to agree, however, is that 2009 will be an extremely challenging and exciting year for all of us working in CSR and sustainability. Their unified plea was for us to focus on the strategic, systemic reforms, rather than fiddling around the edges with incremental change. And speaking of strategic initiatives, if you haven't yet seen the Posnan Communique, signed by 140 global businesses, check it out at:

http://www.cpi.cam.ac.uk/programmes/energy_and_climate_change/corporate_leaders_group_on_cli.aspx

Who Are Your Top 10 CSR Leaders?

CSR International is putting together a Top 100 CSR Leaders List - including both thought-leaders and leaders-in-practice. 

To start with we are asking for your Top 10s, from which we will compile a master list. We will then open it to a public vote, based on which we will create a ranking.

To get the process going, here is my Top 10 list (in no particular order):

* John Elkington

* Stuart Hart

* Muhammad Yunus

* Simon Zadek

* Michael Braungart

* Jeffrey Immelt

* Jeffrey Hollander

* Anita Roddick

* Ricardo Semler

* Stephan Schmidheiny

Who would you add to your list of corporate sustainability and responsibility leaders?