SustainabilityForum.com blogs

SustainabilityForum.com will join forces with TheEnvironmentSite.org

FabianPattberg — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 10:08:41 +0000

This announcement might come as a surprise to some of you but I decided to integrate SustainabilityForum.com into my larger community called TheEnvironmentSite.org.

The new site is a very popular community of sustainability and environmental enthusiasts from across the globe. I took over the website from a friend about 6 months ago and recently finished the first stage of redevelopment of this site.

The issue I had over the last few months following the redevelopment was that I had a lot of similar content on both sides and I was spending a lot of time each day updated both sites with content that was much alike.

I therefore had to make a difficult decision on how to change this. TheEnvironmentSite.org has a very active discussion forum and that is why I decided to keep this community and move all of the bloggers and contributors I have on SustainabilityForum.com over to the new site and have them contribute to the main blog.

The new TheEnvironmentSite.org will therefore focus on the following main areas: Sustainability, Environment, Corporate Social Responsibility and jobs and internships as well as useful guides about all of these topical areas.

I very happy to say that all my bloggers have agreed to participate in the new site so you can be sure to read the same quality posts and topics that are similar to those of this site.

Here are the links to the equivalent and newly created forums on TheEnvironmentSite.org

Main Blog and Page:
http://www.theenvironmentsite.org

Introduction Forum
http://www.theenvironmentsite.org/forum/introduce-yourself/

Environment and Sustainability News Discussion Forum
http://www.theenvironmentsite.org/forum/environmental-sustainability-new...

Corporate Responsibility Forum
http://www.theenvironmentsite.org/forum/corporate-responsibility-forum/

Climate Change Forum
http://www.theenvironmentsite.org/forum/climate-change-forum/

Jobs and Internships
http://www.theenvironmentsite.org/forum/job-offers-internships-across-gl...

Sustainability and Environmental Guides

http://www.theenvironmentsite.org/green-living-guides/

Please feel free to join our new community. There will be a lot going on and I am sure you will not regret it. :-)

Froth at the bottom of the pyramid

Chris Milton — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 19:51:11 +0000

I've been discussing Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) development with JK for a month or so. JK is a journalist, currently travelling around Africa and reporting upon how businesses are bringing development to local communities.

JK's reporting on the BoP economy is undoubtebly Good Stuff, but I remain almost stubbonly sceptical about the long term benefits BoP engagement can bring and how it will lead to the alleviation of poverty. I do not wish to to damage JK's wonderful BoP project with negative reportage, so until he gives his go ahead for me to name him, I won't.

In the meantime, this blog is a reply to the last email I recieved from JK. In this email he asked:

...if the poor aren't being FORCED to buy these products (meaning they are making their own decision to purchasing it), and it is giving them a true benefit (like clean water, which can prevent many many diseases and issues that in turn cause more of a financial burden than new filters or service), then I really see it as a mutual benefit

As I needed an minor essay to explain my thinking, I thought why not turn it into a blog. So here it is..

a) being FORCED to buy something is a tricky area to engage in. As a UK home owner and a car driver I am FORCED to buy buldings insurance and car insurance. For sure, I get to choose who I buy them from, but I have no legal recourse not to buy insurace on these two most significant purchases. However I'm not legally obliged to have a clean water supply to my house, yet if I don't have one I could be arrested for child abuse. FORCE is a very difficult word and shold be treated as such;

b) is BoP really "giving them true benefit"? We need to think very carefully about our definition of benefit and not make any assumptions. It's here that my real problem with BoP begins.

Many BoP businesses are funded through loans from their local bank. The money those local banks have to lend doesn't appear out of nowhere ... usually its origin is the World Bank, the European Development Fund, the China Development Bank, etc etc

Bringing clean water to places is undoubtedly a huge benefit, but is doing so at the expense of long lasting debt a price worth paying .. does it alleviate poverty at the bottom of the pyramid, or compound it?

Second of all, when money gets involved our perspectives change and we start to try and justify why we make money.

For example, a few years ago I waded through Microsoft's community / sustainability / responsibility report & online content (yes, waded is the right word .. there really was an awful lot of it). One thing which stuck out was how the company said it was helping to promote and support cutural diversity by ensuring its products were available in a whole heap of different languages and dialects.

Utter rubbish. It was trying to shift more units and so was trying to reach out to smaller and more niche markets. This is common business practice when you've saturated your primary market. It may have the result of supporting local languages and dialects but its certainly not the motivation.

The same holds for all the companies which are starting to wave the BoP banner and say "we do BoP, aren't we wonderful!". No. You're a bunch of greedy capitalists who have cottoned onto the fact that there is a huge market of nearly two thirds of the World's population who you can sell to if you drop your price low enough.

Neither of these criticisms hold true for the many many many grassroots businesses which are springing up at the bottom of the pyramid, which is one of the reasons I'm sensitive about JK's identity. But I see alot of western companies talking abut BoP as a new market, somewhere new to speculate and exploit.

In other words, this is old fashioned capitalism all over again.

The froth is beginning to show and soon the bubble will start to inflate. Chances are it will grow and grow and then finally burst. When it does burst will it have brought the people at the bottom of the pyramid any lasting benefits? Will it have helped them out of poverty? Will it have enhanced their culture, or stamped on it with a western heeled financial jackboot?

I remain very worried and, as I said before, stubbornly sceptical. Which is a shame, but unfortunately very true.

Picture Credit: The Fortune At The Bottom Of The Pyramid by oneVillage Initiative under Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License. Trimmed by Chris Milton.

Profiling the Chief Sustainability Officer: Is MBA Still the Gold Standard?

Aman Singh Das — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 20:39:30 +0000

What do companies look for in a Chief Sustainability Officer? According to a new report, you must be visionary and a strategic thinker.

And, if you can "prioritize and plan, communicate and motivate, and delegate and direct," even better.

Conducted by Footprint Talent, an Atlanta-based corporate social responsibility recruitment firm, and WAP Sustainability, the survey titled "The State of The CSO: An Evolving Profile," polled 254 CEOs, HR chiefs, chief operating officers and CSOs to determine what exactly organizations want to see in a Chief Sustainability Officer.

Polled executives represent almost every industry including consulting, manufacturing, advertising, architecture, accounting and education, and companies and institutions like Accenture, ArcelorMittal, Mattel, Mars, Novo Nordisk, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Siemens, Sodexo, and the University of Denver.

Top Skills for a Chief Sustainability Officer

Most noteworthy are the requirements detailed as key competencies for a CSO. Top picks, for example, included:

But that’s not all. Continue reading on Vault's CSR Blog: In Good Company.

Picture Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/opensourceway/4525955161

Big Oil – the perfect storm?

GarethKane — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 10:45:21 +0000

The sharp rise in oil prices over the last week has coincided with a raft of inter-related headlines – the popular uprisings across North Africa and the Middle East, revelations via the Wikileaks US cables that Saudi Arabia has been overstating its oil reserves by 40%, and claims from the International Energy Agency that the oil price is putting the global economic recovery at risk. This news comes on the back of recent allegations from whistleblowers that the International Energy Agency has been hiding the onset of global ‘peak oil’ and BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill which drew attention to the fact we are prospecting for oil in more and more difficult locations, suggesting the low hanging fruit has already been picked.

It’s coming increasingly clear that climate change is just one reason to wean ourselves off high carbon fuels very quickly. The more immediate, tangible, in your face threats – global instability, fuel and commodity prices, quality of life, energy security and national security are much easier to sell across political and social spectrums. As an aside, it may be that the way to tackle climate change is not to talk about it, but to focus on these ‘what’s in it for me’ factors instead.

So if oil is in trouble, what alternatives do we have? ‘Coal’ was for a long time the easy answer, but evidence is emerging that the ‘cheap abundant coal’ meme is based on shaky 30 year old assumptions which may no longer apply. The only truly sustainable energy sources are renewables, but as yet they only represent a tiny fraction of global energy use. So can they save us?

An interesting point came from Chris Huhne, the UK’s Energy and Climate Change Secretary during a speech last week. His department has calculated that $100 a barrel is the oil price at which the low carbon economy can stand on its own feet and compete with fossil fuels mano-a-mano. With the price of Brent crude at $108 a barrel as I type, you might think ‘job done’ – well not quite. As with all so-called ‘no-brainer’ decisions, many otherwise very clever people close their brains to inconvenient truths. We need a raft of enlightened investors and entrepreneurs to make the leap - and there is plenty of evidence that they are on their way. Investments in renewable energy overtook those in fossil fuel exploitation for the first time in 2008. Fast Company magazine recently profiled the ‘Beyond Petroleum generation’ of ex-BP executives who jumped ship for renewable energy start-ups when the oil giant reverted to type. They sang with one voice that oil was on its way out and that renewables was the sector to be in.

So with the oil world in turmoil and renewables fast becoming the cool industry du jour, there is a strong chance we are witnessing a perfect storm. Will the fossil fuel industry become the fossilised fuel industry? Will the renewables revolution finally blossom? We shall soon find out.

Post written by Gareth Kane.

Picture Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/powazny/3782692376

Four CSR Challenges for Sustainable Businesses

Chris Milton — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 10:44:45 +0000

We have become so used to the way business has been done for the last 50 years or so it's often difficult to break out of the mindset and look at what is unsustainable and how we can fix it.

Four pieces of news from the past few weeks have set me thinking, and below are my conclusions. These I offer up as four challenges for CSR businesses, ways in which they can truely change the paradigm of business to a more sustainable model.

Challenge 1 : Change Your Pricing Policy

A blog I read last week (I truely forget where) was having a rant about state intervntion in markets to protect precious resources. Why should we need state regulation, the poster opined, when we already have an adequate mechanism for protecting resources : market price.

I won't bother to argue this point by point, suffie to say the whole rationale of a market economy is that price is NOT based solely upon production costs. It is based, in a pretty barefaced way, on how much you can get away with charging.

For example: a quick Google tells me I can pick up a wirelesss keyboard and mouse for up to £27. However a wireless RS232 connector (for monitors) costs up to £158. The technology isn't that different, it's just that RS232 connectors are typically business only items so the manufacturers ramp up the price.

The challenge is to review your pricing policy. Take out the idea of how much you can get away with charging. If this brings you in drastically below your competitors then be prepared to explain the policy to your clients.

Business is about profits, yes. Greed, no.

Challenge 2 : Innovate Don't Copy

Competing in the marketplace is hard, really really hard. Your competitor brings out a new product or service and suddenly you're under pressure to produce something new yourselves.

There's a disparaging term in journalism: churnalism. This is where the same story is reported as news by several different outlets with no new content, comment or opinion added. Often it's nothing more than the reorganisation of a press release, which happens frighteningly often even on quality news outlets.

As an example of copying gone mad, consider a recent report by the French consumers' association (UFC). This found that very few of the new drugs introduced in 2010 actually brought medical benefits: most were simply a reformulation in order to appear to innovate, charge more and appear to be keeping up with competitors (who were, of course, doing the same thing).

Churnalism doesn't produce news : pharmaceutical reformulation doesn't improve health : copying your rivals isn't a business model.

The challenge is to review your product and services offering and cull anything which isn't truey innovative. Go for the jugular and look to innovate.

There is a valid arguement for differentiation and USPs are important; however simply copying your rivals "because you have to compete" only leads to business stagnation.

Challenge 3 : Respect Your Resources

Business is all about adding value. Thus the miner charges for the iron ore, the smelter for purifying it into a metal, the blacksmith for producing the sword and the mercenary for killing people. Each adds value, each takes a profit.

How big a profit you take is based upon how you leverage your resources. In essence, if you can get your resources cheap and sell them expensive you get a big profit. We've already dealt with the selling them expensive above, but what about the getting them cheap?

The price of labour for raw goods has become a growing irritant over the past few decades with various initiatives looking to bring a fairer deal to workers at the very bottom of the supply chain. Very little is done about our own western businesses however.

The standout example of leveraging gone wrong is the recent sale of HuffPo to AOL. To recap, HuffPo was started in 2005 with up to $2m investment. In 2010 it made $31m and a few weeks ago it was sold for $315m, $300m of which was in cold hard cash.

During its entire history the people who made the site a success, the writers, were completely unpaid. There wasn't even anything in the deal about whether they would continue, be paid by AOL, remain unpaid .. or whatever.

Forget about the ethics of the situation, when you look at it in terms of who's adding value the whole thing is lopsided. Of course Ariana Huffington can sell her business and of course she takes a return on her initial investment. But are we really to believe that all those bloggers added absolutely zero value to the site's success?

So, the challenge is to re-evaluate your employees and think about who adds value to the organisation. Forget about the market for pay, competitors, skills and .. most of all .. the old "generals and soldiers" corporate structure.

Think instead about who brings what value to the company. For sure senior managers will say they deserve to be paid more because of the skills they have, but then again a vanishingly small number will have the same skills as their "shopfloor" employees.

Once you've done this, readjust your pay grades appropriately. And whilst you're about it, be open and transparent with your employees. You never know, they may like you for it.

Challenge 4 : Be Sustainable, Be Committed

Hidden costs are gnawing away at countries' economies like a swarm of termites on steroids. The most startling of these is the recent Harvard report that coal has cost the US a staggering $500 billion over the product's lifecycle, an estimation the report describes as "conservative".

The trouble is that up to this point we have had a very short sighted view about what is sold when we deliver a product or service. Yes there are certain hoops you have to jump through (mainly trade description stuff) but generally the provider doesn't have to think too hard about what impact their product or service may ultimately have.

Surely this is the wrong way round? If I manufacture a washing machine surely it's up to me to make sure it won't shred your clothes, not up to you to put unshreddable clothes in it in the first place?

Cradle to cradle manufacturing has been around for nearly a decade now and, thanks mainly to the EU's increasingly tough stance on waste and recycling, manufacturers are starting to take it on board. In this context manufacturers are having to pay for the recycling of their products, which is focussing design upon ensuring the materials and construction support the aim.

But how can you translate this into the services sector?

Here's the challenge: talk to your clients during business negotiations and agree on terms for your re-engagement at a later date should the service you provide need changing. This re-engagement shouldn't be approached as a new thing, but as a reuse or recycling of a service already provided.

The cost is a different matter: unlike manufactured products you cannot charge for recycling as part of the initial service price. But you can take a more long term, commited and sustainable view. And this, I think , will be more attractive to potential clients, rather than the current "chuck it over the wall and run" model we currently pursue.

So...

These are my thoughts, but what do you think? Too ambitious? Too "socialist" (I've tried not to be!)? Or just plain wrong? Which can you see working, and which ones not?

Picture Credit: Everest by Pablo Costa under Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License.

Asbestos: A Study in Corporate Irresponsibility

Krista Peterson — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

A highly heat-resistant mineral, asbestos has been used since ancient times to provide heat resistance to other materials. Greek historian Pliny the Elder recounted stories of tablecloths that could be thrown in the fire to clean and come out spotless and unsinged. Throughout the twentieth century, asbestos was used in everything from insulation to brake pads to household appliances. Now it is widely known that exposure to asbestos can cause serious health problems, including symptoms of mesothelioma, an aggressive and deadly cancer of the lining of the chest or abdomen.

However, while many workers in factories, shipyards, and construction sites where asbestos was prominent remained unaware of the dangers, there is mounting evidence to show that many of their employers knew. The Weyerhaeuser Company, one of the largest pulp and paper companies in the world, made extensive use of asbestos in their factories to prevent the paper materials from catching fire. Through normal wear and tear, the asbestos-containing materials would shed large amounts of dust, which employees recall swirling through the air, creating a constant “snowstorm.” As this dust was breathed in, fibers of asbestos lodged in the workers’ lungs, creating chronic health problems.

Documents dated as early as 1972 show that Weyerhaeuser officials were aware of the link between those health problems and the asbestos in the mills, yet they did not even begin the process of removing the toxic substance until 1989. Workers recall watching men in hazmat suits carefully remove materials that they themselves had routinely handled with no protective equipment at all. The company did begin to monitor some of its employees’ health in the mid-1970s, but monthly safety meetings never included information on the dangers of asbestos.

Tragically, there were masks and respirators available for use in the mills, but, unaware of the toxicity of the asbestos dust, employees used them only for chemical spills.  Weyerhaeuser is just one example of the reckless attitude of companies toward asbestos use. The material was effective as an insulator, readily available, and – most importantly to them – cheap. Respirators and other protective gear are expensive, however, and thus many corporations withheld the knowledge that these items were necessary. Even workers that didn’t necessarily deal directly with asbestos were at risk, as were their families and friends. The entire town of Libby, Montana, has become the most expensive Superfund clean-up site in the world, thanks to a nearby vermiculite mine that contained asbestos as well. Once again, there are documents to show that while the heads of the W.R. Grace mining company were aware of both the presence of asbestos and its health hazards, they did nothing to warn the workers or the town. Now, asbestos-contaminated soil must be removed by the truckload, and many residents show evidence of mesothelioma symptoms.

Asbestos contamination is a matter of human rights as well as environmental health. Though manufacturers in the U.S. have largely stopped using asbestos in their products, it has not actually been banned. A 1989 EPA regulation that would have outlawed the use of the mineral was overturned by New Orleans’ Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and has not been revisited since. Asbestos is regulated under the Toxic Substances Control Act, but the EPA does not oversee the manufacture, processing, or distribution of asbestos-containing materials. As it stands, companies are still allowed to set their own limits on the use of this toxic material, and history shows that businesses have done a disastrously poor job of protecting not only their customers, but their employees as well.

References:

Brown, Matthew. (May 24, 2010). “Asbestos contamination still taking toll on town.” Retrieved February 14, 2011 from MSNBC.

Saker, Anne. (April 21, 2002). “North Carolina workers haunted by years of Weyerhaeuser asbestos exposure.” Retrieved February 14, 2011 from Access My Library.

Picture Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/avlxyz/2968759560

CSR Reporting: Why so Slow America?

Aman Singh Das — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 14:50:55 +0000

Annual reporting isn't the most exciting topic of discussion for even the geekiest of people. To then expand the discussion to integrated reporting—when companies integrate their financial report with sustainability and CSR indicators—is a formidable task.

But for the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)—the developer of global sustainability reporting guidelines—this is a conversation that begins with a broader economic question: Why is the U.S., the world's biggest economy and the erstwhile Mecca for social entrepreneurship lagging behind?

In other words, "Why so slow, America?"

That's how David Vidal, director of The Conference Board's Center for Corporate Citizenship & Sustainability put it, referring to the miniscule percentage of companies that are embracing the push to redefine corporate reporting and have begun publishing annual sustainability reports. (In 2009, 12 percent of all reports came from the U.S.; 45 percent were from Europe.)

The occasion: the Launch of Focal Point USA, the agency's first official presence in the U.S.

Vidal was on hand to moderate a panel with several prominent practitioners of the corporate sustainability world, including:

• Mindy Lubber, President, Ceres

• Susan Arnot Heaney, Director, Corporate Responsibility, Avon (who will be joining me on a panel next week to discuss how to use social media to engage stakeholders on sustainability & CSR) • Mari Snyder, VP, Social Responsibility & Community Engagement, Marriott • Steve Leffin, Director of Global Sustainability, UPS • Curtis Ravenel, Director for Sustainability Initiatives, Bloomberg

While the panelists highlighted several paradigms that come with infusing the traditional 10-K with environmental and social colors, each had a common objective: to explain why they chose to publish sustainability reports and how they countered the challenges that emerged along the way?

Several observations stuck out.

UPS: Execution & Communication Equally Important

"Doing is a journey but speaking about it is equally important." So said Steve Leffin, as he attempted to emphasize that no one should try to navigate all the complexities of sustainability reporting alone.

As for why he chose to follow GRI standards: "The question of ROI came up pretty often internally. GRI allows us to talk objectively with data and numbers, which in turn gives your argument structure," he said. And the sense of necessity that follows.

Marriott: Sustainability is the Perfect Opportunity for Training & Development

Seconding Leffin, Marriott's Snyder emphasized that her role was to "infuse business strategy with sustainability and environmental impact," and that "GRI is the tool that helps these conversations."

Her main challenge: "How to keep people continually informed of what we are doing internally."

Snyder also stressed that sustainability reporting provided Marriott with significant competitive advantage and offered the perfect opportunity for educating employees and other stakeholders on the complexities of a company's social and environmental impact.

Avon: Employees are the Most Important Stakeholders

For the world's largest employer of women, the biggest lesson on transparency came doing fundraising work for breast cancer. As Susan Arnot Heaney put it, "For Avon, the stakeholders in the market are important, but most important are our Avon women." Not only that, but the power of "one small action that didn't resonate with our women could push us out of business."

"And they are demanding data from us continually," she said.

Bloomberg: Game Changing for Investment & Trading Choices

According to Ravenel, it took Bloomberg three years from initial concept to finally start reporting on its sustainability initiatives.

On the consumer side, Bloomberg recently launch a dedicated environmental, social and governance (ESG) service for all its professional trading screens. Calling it "game-changing," Ravenel said that having ESG data on the same screen as other financial indicators for analysts has the potential to change the entire of process of trading and investments.

Ethical Markets, Bloomberg sourced "ESG data on 3,000+ companies in 45 countries" with the coverage comprising of "20 key performance indicators (KPIs) that combine ESG factors with financial fundamentals data.">

What led to this decision? "In 2005, only 700 companies were disclosing what we call adequate information on sustainability. Today, that figure stands at 5,000."

CERES: Companies Need Actionable Roadmaps to Pursue Sustainability

Mindy Lubber–a celebrity in her own right among the CSR crowd--concluded the panel by making the case for why standards like GRI help push the sustainability discussion forward at organizations.

1) "Businesses always have a plan," she said, noting that before GRI, "Companies didn't have a tool to chart out a social and environmental plan. Brands look at sustainability reports because now they have a roadmap to work off of."

2) Financial tools help with goal-setting. 3) "GRI reports are designed to bring senior leadership into the fold. No CEO will sign off on a public report without knowing the details of the presented data." 4) A globally recognized standard helps immensely in the "call for stakeholder engagement."

Vidal closed the event with a question for the audience that resulted in some eye-opening answers: What are the top three reasons for your company's reluctance to embrace sustainability—and to adopt sustainability reporting?

What emerged from the attendees were not a top three, but 11 challenges that stand in the way of corporate sustainability.

And some of them just might surprise the most veteran of CSR professionals.

Picture Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/69951919@N00/3498333311

The Governments claims that regulations will protect wildlife on privatised FC land are undermined by their own rhetoric

Grasslands Trust — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 10:46:18 +0000

The Government claims that they will use regulations to protect wildlife and archaeology on land sold by the Forestry Commission as a result of the proposed privatisation. As I mentioned in my previous blog on this subject these regulations include felling licences, which control where trees may be felled, and what should be replanted after they are felled. Fines for contravening felling licences can be huge, running into ten of thousands of pounds. Felling licences tend to be about the scale of tree-felling and the requirement to replant following felling. They have generated controversy where former heathland sites, some even in Special Protection Areas are replanted with conifers.

But the regulations that are supposed to protect open habitats such as grassland, heathlands and moors are much, much weaker, and rarely enforced. These regulations stem from the EIA Directive enacted in 1985, and in particular projects where there is a significant environmental impact on uncultivated or semi natural areas as a result of intensive agriculture of forestry. Successive governments attempted to avoid implementing EIA for agriculture and forestry in the UK, until they were forced to, under pain of large fines from the EC, in 1999.

EIA for agriculture is weak, ineffective and rarely enforced. There have been more successful appeals against enforcement action than there have been successful cases – and as we have found, plenty of cases where semi-natural grasslands have been destroyed regardless of the regulations. It’s about as weak a piece of legislation as it is possible to have, apart from those old laws that sit around on the statute books for centuries, like witchcraft or setting fire to her majesties dockyards.
These EIA-derived regulations are what the Government in its consultation document states will be used to protect the biodiversity interests on FC land that has been sold into the private sector. For a start EIA for agriculture doesn’t even apply until a patch of top priority habitat exceeds 2ha. In forestry sites many open areas are small, well below 2ha, but together they create incredibly important networks of open spaces, where flowers provide nectar sources for insects like woodland butterflies. Butterfly Conservation has been working with FC to transform conifer plantations to restore these small open habitat to create conditions for threatened woodland butterflies like heath fritillary, to great effect.

EIA for forestry, which is supposed to protect open habitats from being planted with trees, only starts to apply after a huge 5ha threshold unless the site is in an AONB or National Park in which case it’s 2ha. habitats such as semi-natural grasslands mostly occur in small patches, especially outside protected areas. So there is even less chance of this regulation applying, to require an environmental assessment of a tree planting proposal on open ground. And sadly there are plenty of cases where tree planting has taken place on important grassland sites, not just in the past, but here and now.

Which takes us back to the Felling Licences. If the privatisation is pushed through, what will become of the FC staff who process felling licences? These are the last line of defence against damaging tree planting. Will they be able to spend the time looking at each proposal for felling and replanting – especially if there is a flood of applications from new owners of former FC sites?

But there’s a deeper problem, which is that this Government is enthusiastic in its rhetoric of de-regulation, that is removing what little regulation there is currently in place to protect the environment. A de-regulation taskforce was set up by Minister Paice charged with identifying those regulations which were stifling economic growth and innovation. I was part of a group from Wildlife Link’s agriculture group who met with the chair of the taskforce Richard MacDonald, before christmas. I was amazed to discover that the group were not even aware of the existence of the regulations on agriculture stemming from the EIA directive. That is how high profile they are! I was re-assured that the taskforce would now look into this issue and I await their findings with excitement, if not a little trepidation.

So that is the question I leave you with – how can a government on the one hand lead a crusade against red-tape on the grounds that it is preventing people from building new businesses, innovating and kick-starting the economic revival; and on the other hand claim that regulation will be strong enough to protect the important environmental and historical features on 250000ha of state land they are about to sell off – some of which will be bought by private individuals, companies, farmers, with plans to use it (even if that use is just commercial forestry or agriculture) to develop new businessess, innovate and contribute to the economic revival?

Article written by Miles King from The Grasslands Trust

Picture Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rainerebert/4733999124

Human Rights Due Diligence

Chris Milton — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Human Rights, as Scott McAusland (former communications manager at GRI) recently told me, is the poor relation of the environment in the CSR world.

I couldn't agree more.

The trouble is that human rights is not an easily measurable area, unlike say carbon emissions. Very few businessmen (and I would venture CSR professionals) really understand how it fits into the overall picture.

For example, think about parents living in fear of their children geting ill because they'd have to leave work and pick them up from school ... or the business which expect you to do overtime to complete a job or makes it clear you "ought" to.

Both of these are human rights violations, and they happen with startling regularity around western businesses.

Human rights isn't just about training your employees or watching the hours they work. We once thought that getting our electricity from coal-fired power stations was OK. Many current working practices (legal or otherwise) are at the coal-fired level of understanding.

Due Diligence

The issue is fast gaining prominance. Last week saw the end of the UN's consultation on the proposed Protect, Respect, Remedy Framework for Human Rights which lays out the broad principles business and government should uphold.

In the meantime, it's becoming an increasingly large part of indices such as the DJSI and FTSE4Good.

On the more practical side, the Institute for Human Rights and Business launched a report into Human Rights Due Diligence (PDF) last year which both reports on and predicts where Human Rights policies will be 15 years from now.

Key aspects to the report are:

-- creating a meaningful Human Rights policy by referring to accepting international conventions and not seeking to exclude criteria on the grounds of relevance;

-- assessing the risks and impacts a poor human rights record (again I stress, even if it's legal) has upon the business;

-- implement practices and incentives to integrate human rights into the working environment;

-- use imaginative and transparant qualitative and quantitative KPIs to track and report progress.

None of these are particularly difficult:

-- policies which reference the relevant conventions can be tracked down fairly easily;

-- risks and impacts flow fairly obviously from them and many will already be covered under human resources and health and safety compliance;

-- similarly many incentives will already be in place, the key is to ensure these are expanded and employees are informed of the human rights foundation the company is adopting;

-- KPIs would obviously flow from those incentives but many (such as staff complaints) will already be collected, so there is a transparency issue here as well.

The future

A decade ago not many companies thought much about their waste or carbon emissions. Companies need to understand that these areas are just the vanguard of a much larger change in how business is done, moving from compliance to repsonsibility.

Introducing a formal human rights poicy is one of the best ways that change can be fostered.

Picture: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Four International CSR Resources

Chris Milton — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Today I'd like to quickly share what, for me, are four invaluable resources in the CSR world. The reason I like these so much is because they're commercially neutral in their reporting yet contain many updates which it's difficult to get hold of so easily.

The four are...

Accountability Central is a news aggregator, run by the Governance and Accountability Institute. Its news feeds are articulated through the traditional Environment, Social and Governance channels and there are supporting RSS feeds. The site also produces its own op-ed pieces, which can make interesting reading.

The reason I like Accountability Central is that it pulls together alot of news and comment which I might not otherwise gain access to, from both national newspapers and little known blogs. My one problem is that it's very US-focussed and I wish there were similar sites for the UK, EU and other geographic regions.

Responsible Investor Agenda is a calender of SRI events which CSR professionals would do well to keep an eye on. SRI and CSR are intertwined and, in a capitalist system, one of the things which separates a good CSR professional from an outstanding one is their understanding of how the ethical investment market is moving.

The Responsibile Investor Agenda opens a window onto this very easily and simply. The webpage gives you a very good synopsis of forthcoming events and news and you can also sign up to email alerts.

I also recommend the general RI newsletter, but that depends on how close you wish to get to institutional investor news agenda.

Novethic: this is a French language website which always has new and interesting CSR related material on a day by day basis. Both an RSS feed and a daily newsletter service are available.

Just because CSR news and opinion isn't published in your native language doesn't make it any less worthwhile. Similarly, just because the political agenda of another country is different to your own doesn't make the new reportage from that country any less valid. In other words, keep an open mind.

It's also worth noting that because the site if French language it tend to also report items from North Africa which you wouldn't necessarily come across elsewhere.

RSE Online: this is an Argentine CSR blog (the Spanish language acronym for CSR is RSE). One of the things I find so attractive about it is that the language is consistently positive and upbeat. Now I know I'm a jaded and cynical journalist, so being upbeat isn't particularly difficult when compared to my worldview (!).

So, to close I'd like to reproduce verbatim the recent blog "The Rainbow of CSR" (as mashed by Google Translate - the original Spanish can be read here). If this doesn't give you hope and inspiration, then I'm not sure what will.

The Rainbow of CSR

Approximate an understanding of what lies ahead this new decade, after the rain and storms caused by confrontation of ideas and intentions of individuals, necessarily passes through the filter of the reflection of sunset and sunrise of the new Social Responsibility (SI) a social, organizational and somewhat turbulent political world, in order to contribute to building better places for living.

The rainbow of the RS emerge on various assumptions, reasoning, guidelines, opinions and agreements in every aspect situational generated a discussion that promotes the importance of the value of responsibility as the standard of care and organizational citizen to build better ways to link and integration of the duties and rights of individuals.

The spectrum of light that radiates from an individual RS humanized, which, perhaps having bottomed out, has become aware of their role in society, the environment and the world, therefore the need to exercise or put to use all context talent and determination forged built in experiential travel.

Droplets are formed representing the RS, the cluster of them shows different colors that project the elements that constitute it. Can be recognized between the lamps:

1. The opportunities for reflection that are developing around the world who can know, understand and engage with the value of Social Responsibility, always existing but not always warned;

2. The information and concepts generated in this regard, shared and unveiled by individuals and institutions;

3. The progress in the inclusion and discussion of thematic scenarios academic , organizational and government;

4. The renewed interest in the care and respect of fundamental human rights and the environment;

5. The coexistence recreate for peace;

6. The international consensus achieved around the RS guide within the business context;

7. The incessant noise, but necessary part of citizens that need to be heard and taken into account.

All of these drops make multiple spectrum of the new knowledge and make the RS, which is headed for renewed challenges in this newly entered the decade.

It added that, as constructed realities, they also are reconstructed and deconstructed, with the intention of bringing different elements that, in light of the rainbow of new times, energize and improve the preconditions and current RS, entering changes needed to balance the colors that are reflected in society and organizations of the new decade and permeate to individuals, organizations and state, a necessary and judicious balance between the twilight of the duties and rights.

The RS has entered the auditorium of a new decade, our commitment to strengthen progress in this area, improve and facilitate their entry into the daily lives of individuals voluntarily to link to your organizational environment and thus promote new shades in the rainbow of the RS.

Civility and balance to the trends that move the individual from what is his duty or task and what is their right or option, look like light colors that add to the color system for the new spectrum of light from the SR to increase their manipulation from human and organizational dimensions, and recognize the other and shaping us.