My pessimistic tendencies are really to be understood as a mindset calculated to ensuring that optimism is sustainable over time.
There are no medals for pointing out the many ways in which the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development -- which ended yesterday -- fell short of what many had hoped for in terms of bold and clear leadership from governments.
In next week's post I will try to screen the huge amount written and said about Rio for what may briefly be said relevant to this blog's subject: the role and regulation of the private sector in achieving public goals, especially in Africa.
Wading through this now, I'm taking the easy route by offering only a reflection on the words used for the summit's outcome document 'The Future we Want'. Whatever its many paragraphs, I wonder if there is something significant in this not having been called 'The Future we Need'. You can imagine an activist arguing that the global development and environmental challenges 'we' all face are not matters merely of want, but of (dire) need.
Well this is just one (optimistic, perhaps counter-intuitive) thought, but could one argue that referring to 'needs' in such cases holds less potential than referring to 'wants'?
On the corporates side -- and while not all sustainable development issues can be explained in terms of commercial incentives -- describing an issue in terms of what consumers and potential consumers want (desire) often gets attention going in a way that reiteration of staple needs perhaps does not. One only has to reflect on how investors have 'discovered' the African urban consumer to appreciate this.
For governments -- especially those that tend to neglect their citizens needs -- framing something in terms of wants (demands) might also trigger a different nerve, and perhaps greater responsiveness. This is especially so as governments continue to absorb what 2011's Arab uprisings mean for cases where populations want their needs met far more quickly and inclusively than governments might have thought.
Ahead of next week's review of the Rio+2o fallout, I also include a link to 'The Future we Want' report our firm produced for the UN Global Compact ahead of the Corporate Sustainability Forum that preceded Rio: here.
Jo
Sunday, 24 June 2012
Saturday, 16 June 2012
Rio+20: Corporates and 'The Future We Want'
It is day two of the Corporate Sustainability Forum, ahead of next week's Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development.
The conference clearly will not have the seminal effect of the 1992 event; in particular, governments are currently pre-occupied with near-term economic growth -- and far less so with how green or gregarious it happens to be. There is a strong sense that the corporate forum, rather than the inter-governmental process, is where momentum and innovation on sustainability in development is to be found.
My last post noted that the current era of governmental austerity would accelerate change in the relative roles of the public and private sectors in providing public goods and advancing social development. In the formal Rio+20 policy outcome, governments will place far heavier emphasis on the role of the private sector not just in respecting sustainability concerns but in delivering the technologies, financing and drive required to build 'The Future We Want'. Certainly, the level and profile of business representation and involvement in such summits is far greater these days; the talk is all of public-private partnerships -- partly reflecting fiscal realities on the public sector's part.
For at least the largest global firms, the risks of insufficient action in building peaceful, prosperous, less-polluted societies (and the opportunities provided by demand for greener, friendlier products and services) provide such an incentive that they are unlikely to wait around for policymakers to lead the way. We can expect -- and should largely embrace -- greater corporate attention to issues on the Rio+20 agenda, even if collective action constraints remain.
However, throughout all the current excitement about what the private sector can bring to scaling-up urgent developmental needs, we risk forgetting that it is governments who bear the main responsibility to protect and promote social goals; despite sometimes being exposed to consumer pressure, companies are not accountable in the same ways. For their part, major corporates' commitments are to be welcomed, but there is a longer-term risk that explicit adoption by the private sector of the social development agenda potentially exposes business to socio-political forces and expectations that it is generally ill-equipped to manage. If you sell and preach the good society, to some extent you also then own it. The private sector may consider itself damned if it does or doesn't assume a greater role in meeting issues on the Rio+20 agenda.
Amid all the pessimism among activists about the Rio conference, I do think one must be careful in criticising governments for having a short-term focus on avoiding recession (that is, criticising the effect this has on sustainability priorities). This is because serious economic meltdown is hardly a pro-social outcome, nor necessarily a pro-environmental one. Moreover, at least since 2011's (very different) 'Arab Spring' and 'Occupy Wall Street' phenomena, governments are generally more aware that the quality of growth matters as much to social and political stability as the quantity of growth. The risk of widespread or sustained loss of social cohesion or political stability certainly gets governments' attention. Along with strategic energy security imperatives and other incentives, this may help to keep sustainability issues and promoting the green, good economy relatively high on the policy agenda of a surprising variety of states, despite the current focus on growth of any kind.
Jo
- I touched on these themes in an earlier post questioning the assumption that it is governments that necessarily lead on addressing societal issues calling for responsible regulation: here
- Our firm has been working with the UN Global Compact in the lead-up to the corporate sustainability forum. For our CEO's co-authored op-ed piece in yesterday's International Herald Tribune, see here.
The conference clearly will not have the seminal effect of the 1992 event; in particular, governments are currently pre-occupied with near-term economic growth -- and far less so with how green or gregarious it happens to be. There is a strong sense that the corporate forum, rather than the inter-governmental process, is where momentum and innovation on sustainability in development is to be found.
My last post noted that the current era of governmental austerity would accelerate change in the relative roles of the public and private sectors in providing public goods and advancing social development. In the formal Rio+20 policy outcome, governments will place far heavier emphasis on the role of the private sector not just in respecting sustainability concerns but in delivering the technologies, financing and drive required to build 'The Future We Want'. Certainly, the level and profile of business representation and involvement in such summits is far greater these days; the talk is all of public-private partnerships -- partly reflecting fiscal realities on the public sector's part.
For at least the largest global firms, the risks of insufficient action in building peaceful, prosperous, less-polluted societies (and the opportunities provided by demand for greener, friendlier products and services) provide such an incentive that they are unlikely to wait around for policymakers to lead the way. We can expect -- and should largely embrace -- greater corporate attention to issues on the Rio+20 agenda, even if collective action constraints remain.
However, throughout all the current excitement about what the private sector can bring to scaling-up urgent developmental needs, we risk forgetting that it is governments who bear the main responsibility to protect and promote social goals; despite sometimes being exposed to consumer pressure, companies are not accountable in the same ways. For their part, major corporates' commitments are to be welcomed, but there is a longer-term risk that explicit adoption by the private sector of the social development agenda potentially exposes business to socio-political forces and expectations that it is generally ill-equipped to manage. If you sell and preach the good society, to some extent you also then own it. The private sector may consider itself damned if it does or doesn't assume a greater role in meeting issues on the Rio+20 agenda.
Amid all the pessimism among activists about the Rio conference, I do think one must be careful in criticising governments for having a short-term focus on avoiding recession (that is, criticising the effect this has on sustainability priorities). This is because serious economic meltdown is hardly a pro-social outcome, nor necessarily a pro-environmental one. Moreover, at least since 2011's (very different) 'Arab Spring' and 'Occupy Wall Street' phenomena, governments are generally more aware that the quality of growth matters as much to social and political stability as the quantity of growth. The risk of widespread or sustained loss of social cohesion or political stability certainly gets governments' attention. Along with strategic energy security imperatives and other incentives, this may help to keep sustainability issues and promoting the green, good economy relatively high on the policy agenda of a surprising variety of states, despite the current focus on growth of any kind.
Jo
- I touched on these themes in an earlier post questioning the assumption that it is governments that necessarily lead on addressing societal issues calling for responsible regulation: here
- Our firm has been working with the UN Global Compact in the lead-up to the corporate sustainability forum. For our CEO's co-authored op-ed piece in yesterday's International Herald Tribune, see here.
Monday, 4 June 2012
Business, Human Rights and Private Space Missions
It is June -- and so a year since the UN Human Rights Council endorsed, on 16 June 2011, the Guiding Principles on implementing its 2008 'protect, respect and remedy' framework on business and human rights.
This month also sees the 'corporate sustainability forum' taking place around the Rio+20 conference on sustainable development. Our firm has been helping provide input: in coming blogposts I'll reflect on forum issues -- how to scale-up responsible business practices and develop appropriate public-private-NGO partnerships and collaboration on development issues.
The GPs and Framework were not intended to foreclose further elaboration of the nature, source and scope of international standards of business conduct affecting human rights. Nevertheless, since the GPs' adoption attention has shifted from the content of the framework of norms to practical issues around their implementation. Some major firms with the resources to do so (and which hadn't already) can be found 'retrofitting' their internal sustainability and other policies and procedures to account for the GPs. Meanwhile it is now less remarkable to see governments explicitly including 'business and human rights' on the agenda of bilateral discussions and communiques (the recent UK-Colombia joint government statement is an example). Now five years ago that would have been most unusual.
There are a host of issues worth blogging on here, but the nub of this week's post is buried in the paragraph above: resources. The June 2011 endorsement was historic, but only time will tell if the GPs were fated by being born into an age of Western governmental austerity and flat growth -- and related caution by corporations with their cash reserves. The sort of government support one might have imagined being given to national and UN-level follow-up to the GPs' endorsement is unlikely to materialise; while major firms may still mainstream the GPs into their operations and strategy, global economic gloom is probably undermining internal and external constituencies for such change, especially outside the world's biggest and highest-profile branded corporations.
Those who study and work in this field often talk of the 'business case' for taking responsible business conduct seriously and adding 'people' and 'planet' to the bottom-line of 'profit'. The 'case for the business case' is likely to be tested in what lies ahead in the wider economic picture.
An optimistic view is that some business leaders will press ahead -- perhaps even more so in the circumstances -- with innovative social investment, corporate responsibility and shared civil-corporate value initiatives. I'll subscribe to that view, if only for the sake of it; austerity will do all manner of things to existing perceptions of what is an appropriate or usual role for the private sector. (Indeed, if one needed persuading of this, last month's first privately-funded space station replenishment mission is food for thought). This blog hopes to chart these changes. Whether to insulate themselves better from social risks or grievances, or to seize new opportunities, some businesses at least in most OECD countries may find themselves persuaded to innovate or lead on social impact issues in ways that we might not expect. Not all such change is cause for alarm.
A less optimistic view is that prevailing mindsets still see many sustainability issues -- both human rights and the Rio+20 enviro-focussed agenda -- as added extras or luxuries. Thus in practical terms those inside policymaking circles in government and around the business boardroom who seek to take forward the GPs (and the whole wider transformation they represent) could well find that process a lot harder now than it might have been had the GPs been born in the higher-growth period of the mid-2000s. Despite the imperatives and incentives for sustainability innovations of the sort to be discussed in Rio this month, the climate of economic uncertainty may undermine what we need to do to change our impact on the climate ...
Jo
References
The UN's 2011 endorsement is here (it also sets out the mandate for the UN working group 'going forward'). The Guiding Principles are here, and the 2008 Framework is here. The Rio+20 corporate sustainability forum page is here.
This month also sees the 'corporate sustainability forum' taking place around the Rio+20 conference on sustainable development. Our firm has been helping provide input: in coming blogposts I'll reflect on forum issues -- how to scale-up responsible business practices and develop appropriate public-private-NGO partnerships and collaboration on development issues.
The GPs and Framework were not intended to foreclose further elaboration of the nature, source and scope of international standards of business conduct affecting human rights. Nevertheless, since the GPs' adoption attention has shifted from the content of the framework of norms to practical issues around their implementation. Some major firms with the resources to do so (and which hadn't already) can be found 'retrofitting' their internal sustainability and other policies and procedures to account for the GPs. Meanwhile it is now less remarkable to see governments explicitly including 'business and human rights' on the agenda of bilateral discussions and communiques (the recent UK-Colombia joint government statement is an example). Now five years ago that would have been most unusual.
There are a host of issues worth blogging on here, but the nub of this week's post is buried in the paragraph above: resources. The June 2011 endorsement was historic, but only time will tell if the GPs were fated by being born into an age of Western governmental austerity and flat growth -- and related caution by corporations with their cash reserves. The sort of government support one might have imagined being given to national and UN-level follow-up to the GPs' endorsement is unlikely to materialise; while major firms may still mainstream the GPs into their operations and strategy, global economic gloom is probably undermining internal and external constituencies for such change, especially outside the world's biggest and highest-profile branded corporations.
Those who study and work in this field often talk of the 'business case' for taking responsible business conduct seriously and adding 'people' and 'planet' to the bottom-line of 'profit'. The 'case for the business case' is likely to be tested in what lies ahead in the wider economic picture.
An optimistic view is that some business leaders will press ahead -- perhaps even more so in the circumstances -- with innovative social investment, corporate responsibility and shared civil-corporate value initiatives. I'll subscribe to that view, if only for the sake of it; austerity will do all manner of things to existing perceptions of what is an appropriate or usual role for the private sector. (Indeed, if one needed persuading of this, last month's first privately-funded space station replenishment mission is food for thought). This blog hopes to chart these changes. Whether to insulate themselves better from social risks or grievances, or to seize new opportunities, some businesses at least in most OECD countries may find themselves persuaded to innovate or lead on social impact issues in ways that we might not expect. Not all such change is cause for alarm.
A less optimistic view is that prevailing mindsets still see many sustainability issues -- both human rights and the Rio+20 enviro-focussed agenda -- as added extras or luxuries. Thus in practical terms those inside policymaking circles in government and around the business boardroom who seek to take forward the GPs (and the whole wider transformation they represent) could well find that process a lot harder now than it might have been had the GPs been born in the higher-growth period of the mid-2000s. Despite the imperatives and incentives for sustainability innovations of the sort to be discussed in Rio this month, the climate of economic uncertainty may undermine what we need to do to change our impact on the climate ...
Jo
References
The UN's 2011 endorsement is here (it also sets out the mandate for the UN working group 'going forward'). The Guiding Principles are here, and the 2008 Framework is here. The Rio+20 corporate sustainability forum page is here.
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