August 29, 2002
Who would have thought that Greenpeace and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development would make a joint statement to call for concrete action and leadership from national governments (especially the US) to address climate change and to put into force the Kyoto Protocol? Well, maybe I.
Believe it or not, it happened last night! The two groups sat down in front a packed auditorium (with audience and press overflowing into the outside lobby of the IUCN building) and delivered the truly historic statement. To me, last night was extremely inspiring to my personal passion: making a business case to corporations that becoming sustainable in their business practices today will not only make them socially and environmentally responsible, it will help these first-movers become more competitive.
I have always held the belief that business and environmentalists need not be antagonistic. Joburg has really reaffirmed my beliefs.
On Tuesday, August 27, 2002, I attended a Dialogue Event sponsored by the Young Managers’ Team of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development as a representative of the Greenpeace Youth Delegation, along with Andrea Avolio (also from the Greenpeace Youth Delegation). Even before Andrea and I arrived in Johannesburg, we held a conference call to prepare for this event to make sure that something concrete came out of this event. We didn’t want it to be just another forum for businesses to talk the walk, but not really walk the walk. But as this week has shown me, businesses have begun walking the walk; it’s the US government that has failed to show the leadership in our efforts to achieve a sustainable future.
Let me tell you a little bit more about the Dialogue Event. The Young Managers’ Team is consisted of young managers from about thirty member companies of the WBCSD, assembled (as far as I can tell) for the purpose of this Summit. The idea of the dialogue event was to create a forum for these young professionals to interface with the youth from various NGOs and government delegations. After an initial introductory presentation, the group of about 60 participants broke out into four discussion groups: Sustainable Development in the Context of Globalization; Corporate Social Responsibility; Corporate Accountability; and Capacity Building.
I arrived in my discussion group on Globalization to find an extremely diverse set of young managers, students, and young representatives of various NGOs. The moderator, a young manager from Interface, Inc., asked each of us to introduce ourselves and to include how each of us came to become interested in the issue of sustainable development. People’s responses were quite interesting in that most people attributed their passion to either the influence of family members or that of media.
For some, the inextricable link between humans and our environment was demonstrated when a young ant was accidentally crushed or when images of the Ethiopian famine appeared on the television set. For me, the TV image of the ozone hole more than a decade ago first demonstrated to me the incredible power of humankind to change the environment. This power was first manifested to me by ozone depletion, and today I strongly believe that anthropogenic climate change is the greatest threat facing our civilization, disproportionately affecting those that have had the least hand in creating the problem in the first place.
After the introductions, the discussion group launched into an envisioning session in which we put forth what we would like to see by 2012, Joburg plus ten. The discussions were very fruitful and could have continued for hours had we had more time. I then had the pleasure of bringing our discussions back to the full group as one of the panelists. I shared with the entire audience our visions of full corporate social and environmental accountability and responsibility; proportionate and meaningful representation and participation by groups currently marginalized at the negotiating table such as youth and indigenous peoples; and governmental and intergovernmental leadership to achieve sustainable living.
Representatives from the other discussion groups also summarized the discussions from their respective groups. If my discussion group was indicative of the others, I must say that these dialogues were extremely inspiring and encouraging, especially to myself, who believes in the potential of the business sector to be the catalyst for positive change.
After the presentations of the discussion summaries, the other two panelists Bjorn Stigson, president of WBCSD, and Miguel, the director of corporate strategy of IUCN, the World Conservation Union also spoke of the important role of youth in business in innovating the business sector for companies to be responsible stewards of the earth. Youth in the audience and on the panel then challenged Bjorn and Miguel to make a commitment to support forums of this sort in order to continue the beneficial dialogue between young professionals that will become the future business leaders and youth within the NGO sector. Personally, this was a tremendous breakthrough. Bjorn and Miguel were also very encouraging of my mission to create change within the business sector through my job as a business analyst at a major consulting company.
And then Bjorn mentioned that Greenpeace and the WBCSD were going to hold a joint press conference. Not having heard any news of such an event, my first instinct was that such joint action between these two “archrivals” was unlikely.
I guess I should not have been that surprised. If Greenpeace was going to include a consultant on its youth delegation, it certainly should not be beyond the realm of possibility that GP would join forces with the WBCSD to show their frustration about the lack of leadership shown in addressing climate change. Afterall, all things are possible. And I’m hopeful that concrete and binding frameworks for achieving sustainability will come out of Joburg. If you think I’m just a young idealist, so be it because even Jan Pronk admitted to having a bit of idealism left in him in the energy plenary session. And I certainly don’t mind being likened to Mr. Pronk.