SustainAbility

Three Thoughts on Apple and Insanely Great Brand Leadership

info@sustainability.com (Sustainability) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:21:22 +0000

It’s hard to think about brand leadership without thinking about Apple, now neck-and-neck with ExxonMobil as the world’s biggest company by market cap.

Last week, Apple was top of mind for many of us, with two major pieces of reporting: the UK release of Adam Lashinsky’s book, Inside Apple, which describes in part-admiring, part-unmerciful detail Apple’s tough organizational culture, and the New York Times’s excellent investigation into conditions in Apple’s supplier factories in China.

This last piece spurred CEO Tim Cook to email his 63,000 employees as follows: “Some people are questioning Apple’s values today… Any suggestion that we don’t care is patently false and offensive to us.”

The Meaning of Brand Leadership

I don’t doubt the sincerity and hard work of Apple’s supplier responsibility team – see, for example, Apple’s increasing disclosure and auditing efforts – or of Cook’s words.

But reading the two pieces side by side, it’s heartbreakingly clear to this Apple lover that two of the things that help Apple to make “insanely great products” – its culture of secrecy (designed to maximize pre-release buzz and to keep its teams razor-focused), and its unsparing operational excellence (that is: ability to make heavy demands on suppliers) – have heavy human costs.

Without deeper changes in how business is done, even the most stringent auditing and inspections will have limited impact. As one expert we spoke with said about the systemic challenge of labor conditions in global supply chains, “Eighty percent of problems are due to brand demands.”

For such changes, we’ll need patience, courage and muscle. And that’s what Apple has: while these challenges are certainly not unique to Apple, Apple may be unique in its global influence on manufacturers and its hold on consumers.

I offer three thoughts for Apple (written on a well-loved MacBook Pro) – and, by extension, for all brands – on brand leadership into the 21st century.

Thought #1: Delight Your Customers – and Your Stakeholders

“Apple obsesses over user experience, not revenue maximization,” says one former Apple executive quoted in Inside Apple. Apple does this even when the short-term costs are higher, leading to tremendous longer-term financial rewards.

What if Apple applied this long-term thinking to the “stakeholder experience”? There’s growing anecdotal evidence connecting better working conditions with quality and stronger supplier relationships. And as competition for skilled Chinese labor increases, will Chinese workers remain willing to be woken at midnight with a biscuit and a cup of tea to start assembling iPhones?

Thought #2: Engage in Brand ~~Activation~~ Activism

Should a brand have a “point of view” on sustainability – in other words, should it nudge consumers towards better behaviors? Or should it take a quieter stance, providing choice but leaving it up to the consumer?

We need more brand activism.

Brands can’t and shouldn’t take the place of civil society. But we’re in a world where brands are what get noticed.

“The act of making people think about these issues is a revolutionary act, because no one is talking about it,” says Mike Daisey, playwright and performer of The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. That “revolutionary act” was a crucial contribution of pioneering labels such as Fairtrade and Energy Star. But as such movements struggle to get noticed amidst the noise, it’s time for brands to take up the cause as well.

Greenpeace used Apple’s social capital to great effect with its 2006 “Green My Apple” campaign. Imagine what Apple could do with its consumer love – and buyer clout – to spur system-wide action on factory labor conditions.

Thought #3: Think Drive – Not Demand

Starting at last June’s Sustainable Brands conference, SustainAbility conducted research on the value and challenges that businesses experience in using sustainability certification and labeling. We proposed that businesses start by asking how to define, deliver, demonstrate and create demand for better sustainability outcomes, rather than rushing to decide “which certification or label?”

This last D – demand – is the nut we all want to crack. How do we get customers to reward companies for the sustainability investments they’ve made? Is green marketing dead, or are we just getting started?

Much as I like the alliteration of the 4Ds, I now think “demand” is too narrow. In economics, demand equals purchasing behavior. But many sustainable practices are a public good, and we’ll be disappointed if we expect their communication to translate invariably or directly into B2C sales. Instead, brands may reap demand-side rewards in the form of brand loyalty, brand equity, or trust.

At our report launch, Rob Cameron, the then-chief executive of Fairtrade International, proposed we add a fifth D to the 4Ds: Drive. This got an immediate “Yes!” from the businesses and NGOs in the room. For it captures beautifully the notion that progress will come from the power of unreasonable people (and companies, and governments) with the courage and stamina to play a long-term game with long-term rewards.

That’s brand leadership. It’s not just about Apple – but today, there’s no one better positioned than Apple to deliver.

This article originally appeared on Sustainable Brands website.

(Leadership) Change of Heart

info@sustainability.com (Sustainability) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:25:57 +0000

I did not think about it before sitting down this evening (January 16, 2012), but to write about leadership on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is to feel one’s own limitations.

I am Canadian, and as such I am obliged to reflexively protest how different I am from the American cousins among whom I have chosen to live (and marry). But with King there is no protest. He is a sterling example of the inspiration the USA has periodically offered the world regarding the hope and change possible when citizens unite, and long has been one of my own inspirations. I took joy watching my six-year-old daughter study his legacy this month at school. She’s been enraptured, and I immersed in the power of his message all over again.

Warren Buffett

I flew today from San Francisco to Washington, DC – where I hope to visit this week the new MLK Memorial on the National Mall. I read en route the Time cover story Warren Buffett Is on a Radical Track. Buffett attributes most of the reason he’s become activist and engaged over time to his late wife, Susan Thompson Buffett. The article singles out the occasion she took him to hear Reverend King speak at Grinnell College, where King’s words ‘It may be true that the law can’t change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless’ galvanized Buffett to get more involved in issues of equity and justice.

My title plays with this notion of changing hearts, with the way in which Buffett came to believe things need to be different and has since set out to do what he can to make it so. He is a business leader who has had a change of heart so profound that his persona now seems to be about giving (like 99% of his billions already pledged to charity kind of giving) and demanding recognition of a different notion of fairness for capitalism. His recent and now near infamous prescription? Rich and powerful people and organizations should pay more (literally: and, yes, even in taxes) for the tremendous opportunities society allows them to enjoy.

Resist (Risk), Accept (Risk), Act

The transition from accepting sustainability issues to addressing them is a tremendously difficult thing for business leaders to embrace. When issues (BIG issues: think ecosystem limits which mean commodity inputs for profitable products will spike in price and then dry up) demand changing or abandoning familiar, comfortable and successful business models, resistance is to be expected.

Even so, the change from resisting data likely to demand change to admitting its fundamental truth generally proves simpler than the subsequent shift to action. For even once new information and worldviews are embraced, leaders’ ability to evolve their organizations is limited by context e.g. available skillsets, historic mindsets, consumer preference, investor expectations and the regulatory environment.

2012

This year, like its peers, is just another on the calendar. But not for sustainable development. Ecological systems are stressed in such that we almost can’t afford the luxury of worrying about the classic sustainability focus on intergenerational equity. Rather, individuals and brands that want to make a difference have to think in terms of how to deliver sustainability in this generation, else there might be no future equity to apportion. Sustainability demands leadership capable of accepting the enormity of the challenge that sustainable development entails and willing to explore and support the evolution of business models and markets to address it.

New Pioneers

To plumb lessons of sustainability leadership past and catalyze greater scale and speed on this agenda in the near future, SustainAbility and GlobeScan set out in 2011 to interview a remarkable set of nearly two dozen sustainable development pioneers including: Lester Brown, Madame Gro Harlem Brundtland, Bill Ford, Israel Klabin, Sir Mark Moody-Stuart and Rajendra Pachauri. We will couple insights from these conversations with global public opinion research and use both as a platform to engage a wider public discussion on sustainability leadership in 2012 and beyond.

As much as we are excited about the intelligence we will gain from taking stock in this way, the key will be how we use it to ensure that new pioneers emerge, whether because of their own change of heart, or motivated by their ability to change the hearts of others. As individuals and organizations, our collective challenge for the year and years immediately ahead must be to increase our capacity to identify, nurture and then follow these trailblazers.

As with the pioneers who dared to transit west across the American frontier, this will mean embracing risk – but we are increasingly aware of great and growing risks in stasis, so must believe it will be possible to develop in leaders in business, civil society and government the will to create a sustainable economy in the near term. Inverting King, it’s an effort to change and then steel hearts to action where laws both natural and human have failed to do so.

This article originally appeared on Sustainablebrands.com.

Eco-labels: radical rethink required

info@sustainability.com (Sustainability) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:20:00 +0000

Sustainability labels should focus more on actual company performance

When we talk about the “eco-label model” we’re really talking about a combination of three things.

First, standards – a set of requirements, usually taking a consensus-based approach. Second, certifications – providing assurance of conformity against this standard. And, third, the eco-labels themselves – on-pack marks that indicate conformance with the standard.

This model came into being over 30 years ago, and, surprisingly, has changed very little in that time.

Pioneers

And until now, it could be argued, little change was needed. Certification, labelling and the standards-setting organisations behind them have been pioneers in building a more sustainable economy.

For businesses, they provide a credible reference point for collective action, access to expertise and networks, and can spur demand for certified or labelled goods.

But the mass proliferation of eco-labels in the marketplace – 400 and counting – and the move to mainstream for many (thus removing their value as a differentiator) is significantly reducing their value.

Couple with that the fact that the model itself – based on consensus and inclusiveness – is posing challenges for businesses seeking to take leadership positions in the marketplace.

Embedding sustainability

The time has come to rethink the eco-label model. Certification and labelling are time and money intensive; we can’t – we shouldn’t – certify and label everything. The aim behind certifications and the aspiration beyond labels is the creation of organisations and market systems that are just and sustainable in their entirety.

Rather than certifications and labels driving endless incremental improvement, it would be preferable if the future was built on increasingly rigorous, pre-competitive standards for sustainability performance, above which brands compete to make sustainability intrinsic to their mission and products.

In this future new business models will emerge whose DNA will embed factors previously requiring certification, and civil society will find more effective and efficient ways of holding business accountable.

A new direction?

There is evidence that such change is underway. Different types of certification are emerging.

Greenpeace has verified Nestlé’s commitment to no deforestation. The Better Cotton Initiative standard sets a base level sustainability standard for more sustainable cotton, but is not consumer facing.

And as a marketing tool, some companies have opted to use labels as a “back of pack” mechanism to complement the brand. For example, Method uses Cradle to Cradle certification as a design tool, which matches the brand’s design focus.

Outcomes not standards

In the future there is opportunity for businesses innovate to deliver outcomes rather than standards, complement certification with strong supplier-buyer relationships, and use the power of their brands to delight and mobilise consumers into adopting more sustainable behaviour.

In turn, standards organisations can stretch and innovate alongside business, certification will be complemented by new mechanisms such as partnerships and national regulation, and labels will fade into a quieter, background role, acting as trust marks for those who seek them, and leaving brands – and consumers themselves – to take the lead.

This article originally appeared on EthicalCorporation website.

How Companies Can Meet the New Demand for Fair Play

info@sustainability.com (Sustainability) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:45:33 +0000

“Fair” is in the current ether.

There is the Occupy Movement, raising questions about the fundamental fiduciary responsibility of corporations and government, whether they are acting (or capable of acting) in the best interests of the public, and how to hold them accountable in any event.

There is the ongoing Arab Spring, where another form of citizen power (itself a key inspiration for Occupy) has been challenging and overthrowing regimes across Africa and the Middle East, with emerging reflections and rebounds appearing globally, most recently in Moscow, where suddenly Vladimir Putin feels the need to explain why he will again seek his nation’s highest office.

In the U.K., the coalition government is promising a vote on executive pay, while Ed Milliband is trying to reframe his Labour Party leadership under a rubric of ‘responsible capitalism’.

Meantime (as evident in the title and content of this New York Times piece: Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs), U.S. analysts and pundits are wrestling with data suggesting American social mobility is significantly less than in Canada and many European countries — and what that means for the American Dream.

Finally, there is the perverse new influence of Super PACs in U.S. politics. I frankly can’t even go there — it just seems so antithetical to democracy — but if you want to learn more, this Attack of the Super PACs! article in TIME is worth reading.

Free Trade or Fair Shares?

In this milieu, what might corporations do to demonstrate as much support for fair trade as for free trade?

First, I thought the pre-Xmas Wall Street Journal A Manifesto for Sustainable Capitalism article penned by Al Gore and David Blood of Generation Asset Management offered sage advice. Written from an investor perspective, it calls for “a more responsible form of capitalism, what we call sustainable capitalism: a framework that seeks to maximize long-term economic value by reforming markets to address real needs while integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics throughout the decision-making process.”

The authors posit desirable benefits to companies — higher profits, lower costs, better compliance and lower capital costs — and “recommend five key actions for immediate adoption by companies, investors and others” which, to my ear, have a distinct “play fair” ring to them. Particularly, their recommendations on integrated reporting (greater transparency), “[aligning] compensation structures with long-term sustainable performance,” and “[incentivizing] long-term investing with loyalty-driven securities” suggest a means of business decision-making and operations that tilt towards the greater good.

Second, there is the notion of “fair shares” — something SustainAbility explored in our 2011 research on the future of the food industry Appetite for Change and which is well explained in the WWF-Oxfam report Resource Scarcity, Fair Shares and Development.

WWF and Oxfam focus on “the issues of equity and ‘fair shares’ for poor people and poor countries in the context of limits to resources such as land, water, food, oil and carbon space” and suggest that the “need to advocate for ‘fair shares’ of these resources will become increasingly central to international development.”

For business, this means taking into account the rights of all other users of scarce resources and confronting questions of equity regarding how much of any resource they can consume in the course of their operations.

As framed by WWF-Oxfam: “Is it enough to ensure people’s basic needs are met, or is a more egalitarian approach needed that tries to reduce inequality in access to resources.”

In a business environment used to basically a first come, first serve approach, the notion of guaranteeing equitable access to resources for all users will affect issues from material inputs to vendor selection to product cost. A horizon issue for most today, fair shares will increasingly affect business as ecosystem pressure increases under the demographic burden of a population headed for 9-10 billion; in fact, some are beginning to factoring resource and/or carbon constraint into their business now.

Embracing Fusion

Fusion — the blending of global cultural influences in food, fashion and design to create new flavors, looks and experiences — is trendy in the current meme. But the Fusion I am thinking of today and hoping proves lasting is the Ford Motor Company flagship sedan, a representative mix of the fair shares presently emanating from Michigan.

Updated for the 2013 model year and revealed just this month at the Detroit Auto Show (where it took honors and tuned heads), the new Fusion is global in style and eco at heart. Ford will make gas-only, hybrid and plug-in versions of the car. Even the four cylinder internal combustion engine options (there are three) will get respectable mileage, while the hybrid promises 47 miles per gallon, and the plug-in 100 miles per gallon equivalent in electric mode.

For a mid-size car that Ford expects to be a best-seller, it’s awesome, and all the more so because it is built on the principle of fair shares.

Fair Shares = Fair Play

Ford’s not been as prominent recently in terms of trumpeting sustainability ambitions as Toyota with the Prius family, Nissan with the Leaf, and even a resurgent GM with the Volt, but it has quietly and steadily been unfolding a greener fleet, and a greener strategy.

This comes as the result of a decision taken a few years back to shape its product development strategy around the assumption that society will soon agree that greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) must be capped at no more than 450 parts per million. Along with this assumption is the belief that manufacturers of all kinds will need to design and build their products — use phase included — in a way that sees them consume (in this case, emit) no more than their fair proportion of GHGs.

It’s a profound shift in thinking from a Midwestern company often more associated with durable trucks than creativity. It depends hugely on the behavior of other actors and their making and honoring similar assumptions. But that’s the point. Ford’s promising to play fair. Let’s hold them to it — and demand that other companies play fair too.

This article originally appeared as part of SustainAbility’s Changing Tack column on GreenBiz.com.

USCAP Version 2.0

info@sustainability.com (Sustainability) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 09:58:09 +0000

The US Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), once the primary spokesman for the corporate sector on climate change in Washington, has gone dormant. Why? The reasons are multiple. Climate legislation is a nonstarter in Washington. The term itself has become toxic, that sharply divides the political left and right. The collapse of Solyndra stands as a poster child for those who wish to see an end to the idea of the “green economy.” A deep recession has pushed environmental issues, and climate change in particular, down the list of priorities among Americans. Sustainability in general is seen as a luxury to be addressed at another time.

As the market shift to a carbon-constrained economy becomes a distant hope, what is the corporate executive to do? The answer is to watch closely, prepare, and move when the time is right. The future of a carbon-constrained economy is not “if” but “when”. And management in the face of a pending but uncertain market shift is about balancing timing, pragmatics, and leadership. Central to this strategy is a new coalition of forward thinking corporate leaders that can help usher in the next energy economy. It is time for the next iteration of USCAP.

Timing

The issue of climate change will not go away. The scientific consensus that humans are altering the global climate is too compelling to be ignored or denied for long. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has concluded that, “the balance of evidence suggests a discernable human influence on the global climate.” That conclusion has been endorsed by the National Scientific Agencies of the each of the G8 + 5 countries (including the US National Academies of Science) as well as another 80 scientific agencies worldwide. It is also overwhelmingly supported by surveys of climate scientists and the scientific literature. The charge that climate change is the product of either a corrupt scientific establishment or a socialist environmental movement that seeks to restrict freedom and collapse the capitalist system simply won’t stand the test of time. Jon Huntsman is correct when he warns that the Republican Party should shift its stance on climate change lest it been seen as the “anti-science” party. The vast majority of Americans believe in the scientific process and the conclusions it creates; they assert that belief every time they go to the hospital; every time they start their car; every time they help their child study for their chemistry or biology exam.

With the power of science behind it, the market will shift. The market is quite malleable and adaptive; it seeks to satisfy needs as they arise. And the need for a reduction in carbon is here and now; the science compels it and the opportunity in the market demands it. At the moment, those resisting change are simply holding out. Any market shift creates winners and losers and at present, those that stand to lose are fighting to hold the status quo. But they cannot stop the power of science and the market. While the political process may quell government action during a Presidential election, the market is still shifting and the next administration will have to face scientific and economic reality. Hastening that reality check is the responsibility of forward thinking business leaders.

Pragmatics

This is not rocket science; it is basic business pragmatism. The market shift is being driven by a desire to reduce our carbon footprint, but also to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, protect valuable domestic ecosystems, protect our national competitiveness in the face of rising technological development in the global marketplace (Stephen Chu calls the investments being made by China on renewable energy a threat on a par with the Soviet launching of sputnik), and protect our children’s future. The shift will come in the form of government policy (a carbon price, building efficiency standards, automobile efficiency standards, renewable portfolio standards, feed-in-tariffs, net metering, RD&D subsidies, smart metering, procurement policies, the list goes on). But it will also come in the form of shifts in the more central aspects of the market: rising and uncertain energy prices; technological advancements; shifting consumer demand; increased insurance risk; supplier and buyer standards; rising cost of capital; and the list goes on. These drivers will snowball as more companies see the shifting market landscape and move to capture the opportunities it presents. The fact is that we are in the midst of an energy renaissance where we are beginning to think about energy in an entirely new way: virtually every nameplate in the auto sector offers a hybrid vehicle and many are offering electrics; virtually every company in the construction sector offers green construction materials and supplies; private equity firms are looking to the next big breakthrough in the energy sector; consumers no longer think of gasoline as the only fuel source that can run their automobiles and consider energy efficiency in the products they buy. The interesting thing about a renaissance is that one rarely knows when they are in one until it ends. And at present the market is shifting beneath our feet. The federal government is the one that is lagging.

Leadership

In Washington, Republicans loath the word ”climate change” and President Obama is afraid to invoke it. In that vacuum, it is now time for a new coalition of business leaders to step forward and lead. When the static of the Presidential election comes to an end, they need to shift the public and political debate to recognize what both scientists and the market are telling us – we need to develop a new energy economy. Forward thinking companies know that they need sound energy policy to secure stable, long term energy supplies; they need sound and predictable technology policies for long term investment planning; they need clear and coherent industrial policies that recognize we operate in a globalized marketplace where we are competing against countries that heavily subsidize their domestic industries; they need a knowledgeable consuming public that can make informed purchasing decisions.

Business leaders must lend their voices to the host of “climate brokers” that are calling attention to the issue of climate change by framing it in their own language, one that engages the audience to whom they most directly connect. For example, when people hear about the need to address climate change from their church, synagogue, mosque, or temple, they connect the issue to their moral interests. When they hear it from Republican political leaders, they connect it to conservative ideals. When they hear it from their military leaders, they connect it to their interests for a safe and secure nation. And when they hear it from their business leaders and investment managers, they connect it to their economic interests.

This last group is critically important for the future of this debate. The simple truth is that business institutions hold great import in our society. Scientists can present the evidence of anthropogenic climate change until they are blue in the face and people still still ask each other if they believe in “that theory.” But if business leaders say that it is in their strategic interests to address climate change, then more people will accept it as true. And as companies develop technologies to reduce carbon emissions and show people that solutions are possible, a social consensus around the issue will form. Much like the debate over the link between cigarette smoking and cancer, we will grow to accept the link between man-made greenhouse gases and climate change and teach it to others as being true.

What is needed to make this link is a powerful coalition of corporate leaders that can present a united vision for the next generation economy based on new forms of energy generation, transmission and use. It is now time for a USCAP version 2.0, one that will assert the strategic rationale for reducing our carbon emissions that goes alongside the scientific rationale that is presently at the center of the debate.

Andrew J. Hoffman is Director of the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise, University of Michigan and a member of the SustainAbility Council.

How & Why to Make the Shift from Dialogue to Collaboration with NGOs

info@sustainability.com (Sustainability) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:39:10 +0000

There was a time when it was good enough just to listen. When corporate execs got credit for sitting at the table with an NGO and benefited from a “different perspective.” Their obligation was to “thoughtfully consider” the input in the development of their business plans, strategies and actions. But as the business environment and the sustainability agenda has evolved, so too has best practice in stakeholder engagement.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying there wasn’t business value in listening — there was. It was in fact a refreshing shift from the “convince” model of engaging with stakeholders. The previous model was born of the commonly held belief among many corporate executives that the analysis their staff had done on risks to their business was fact-based, robust and complete.

The problem, if there was one, was that the company just hadn’t done a good enough job in communicating their good deeds, or the rationale for not doing more.

So, the thinking went, let’s bring these stakeholders in, wow them with Powerpoint presentations on our business, our corporate social responsbility achievements, and the commitment of our employees to the communities they serve, and then not only will the NGO’s get off our backs, but they will become our advocates. Oh, and while they are at the table, we should show some respect and listen to what they have to say.

Often what they had to say was actually a pretty useful perspective to hear, if for no other reason than to understand how different people thought about the world, its challenges and its solutions. So “gaining perspectives and insights” became an objective of structured stakeholder engagement.

In fact, for much of the work that SustainAbility does with our clients on stakeholder engagement, this remains an important objective which we state explicitly in the Terms of Reference.

But merely listening and “thoughtfully considering” leaves a lot of value on the table. One of my clients a few years back, when they were just embarking on a structured stakeholder engagement strategy, was so intent at being good listeners (on my recommendation) that at our first break in the morning during one of their first stakeholder roundtables I had to tell them to speak up and be a more active part of the conversation.

Hence a shift to the next phase in the evolution: exchange. This in fact was a quick transition, putting companies back more in their comfort zone where they felt free to respond to and debate what they were hearing from their stakeholders.

This is where many companies are now stuck — their stakeholder engagement consists of an exchange of views. Post-exchange, it is left up to the company to decide what to do, what policies to change (if at all), what issues to address, what actions to take.

Our biggest sustainability challenges (aka societal and business challenges) — poverty, access to water, access to healthcare, climate change, biodiversity loss — are long-term, and require enormous shifts in markets, policy and behavior to fix.

The capacity of an individual company to make any headway on those challenges requires difficult changes implemented over a long period of time. The changes must be made in a way that retains the confidence of their investors (and hence maintains or improves the stock price), or management will be shown the door. Progress is never as quick as activists believe it should be.

So this sets up something of a Groundhog Day dynamic, where stakeholders come to the dialogues every year and restate their case for action, and the company restates its commitment to “thoughtfully consider” what they heard, and everyone goes away not quite satisfied.

It should not be surprising then that the leading edge has moved from stakeholder engagement to stakeholder involvement, stakeholder collaboration, stakeholder partnerships.

OK, so this is not exactly a new idea. Partnerships between companies and NGO’s and other stakeholders have existed for a long time. Some partnerships are solving — or at least making progress on — real-world problems. Witness the partnership between WWF and Coca-Cola [PDF], now in its 5th year, addressing the global water crisis. Or the Conservation International/Starbucks partnership, focused on promoting sustainable coffee production practices. The U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) was a collaboration of NGO’s and progressive businesses in the US who found common cause in pushing for cap-and-trade legislation.

Diverse organizations are finding more ways to work together, not just talk together. They are leveraging each others’ respective strengths to work on issues of common concern. Recently, the sportswear industry has engaged with Greenpeace and the chemical industry to find a way to make sportswear free of toxins in a collaboration that also involves SustainAbility.

My colleague Mohammed Al-Shawaf stated the case for collaboration most eloquently in his year end trends blog post: “…there is a realization that it’s simply impractical to wait for the genius of one company’s R&D team or a particular NGO’s issue expertise and influence to develop the kind of breakthroughs that are required to advance sustainable development. Systemic change, the kind increasingly called for on a wide range of issues, requires strength in numbers and friends in unlikely places.”

That sounds simple enough, but it is by no means easy. Moving from exchanging to collaborating requires clearly defined objectives, aligned interests, and a willingness by all parties to put in the necessary time and effort (and sometimes cash).

It requires a shift in the mindset of NGO’s whose key question was once “what should the company do to address this challenge,” to think about “what can we contribute in addressing this challenge together.”

It requires a shift from corporations as well, ceding some authority to share decision-making with its fellow collaborators. And all participants should be asking, “what skills, knowledge, relationships and capabilities do we have that, when combined with our partners, can move the needle”.

Developing an effective collaboration takes time, energy, commitment and focus. Collaborations work when the objective is clear, the commitment is unwavering, and all parties offer up the skills, knowledge, relationships and capabilities they possess which, when combined with others’, can move the needle on the sustainability challenges we all face.

This article originally appeared as part of SustainAbility’s Changing Tack column on GreenBiz.com.

Unstoppable Forces and Immovable Objects

info@sustainability.com (Sustainability) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:56:13 +0000

SustainAbility Council member Gary Kendall shares this report following a recent visit to China – in particular a portion of his journey featuring a cruise down the Yangtze River and through the locks at the infamous Three Gorges Dam.

“That’s my new house” – my Chinese tour guide gestured toward a row of featureless apartment blocks beneath our vantage point overlooking the river – “and that’s where I used to live.” She showed me a photograph of a modest two-storey structure within the walls of the ancient city of Fengjie. It presumably remains intact, albeit more than 150 metres underwater.

This stretch of the Yangtze – roughly 660km from Chongqing to Sandouping – is much less a river than a lake these days, thanks to the mind-blowing Three Gorges Dam. My guide for the shore excursion of neighbouring Baidi Cheng – the White Emperor City, at the mouth of the still awesome Qutang Gorge – was among more than a million Chinese citizens forced to relocate prior to their homes being submerged by the rising waters. If she was remotely bitter, it certainly didn’t show.

Over many return visits since my two years living in Beijing from 2004, the Middle Kingdom has always left a deep impression or two. It’s hard to grasp the scale and pace of development underway in China without experiencing it for oneself, but while still fresh – if that’s the word – from my most recent trip, I’d like to share some reflections that I hope will provide a glimpse of some of the changes in progress.

I have just returned from two weeks travelling overland in one of the country’s industrial heartlands. Starting in Chengdu, Sichuan, the home Province of my travelling companion, we journeyed by rail to Chongqing before boarding a tourist ship that cruised down the now broad and peaceful Yangtze to Yichang, a few kilometres downstream of the infamous hydroelectric power station.

The relentless intensity of river traffic brought home that electricity generation was but one of the intended outcomes of this stunning engineering endeavour. It may not even have been the most important one. Previously, this was a notoriously difficult stretch of inland waterway, evoking the Symplegades – or Clashing Rocks – successfully navigated in Greek legend by Jason and the Argonauts. Now, an endless stream of gigantic barges piled high with cargoes – notably mountains of coal – ply the becalmed waters. Setting aside the grave environmental and social concerns related to the Three Gorges development – including landslides caused by increased physical pressure on surroundings and loss of agricultural land – one wonders about the net carbon impact of what is ostensibly a renewable energy project, given the enhanced flows of coal that have been made possible.

Countless factories and construction projects dot the river banks. This region of China is well-known for its winter fogs, though it is easy to imagine that the precession of chimney stacks and their attendant columns of smoke – added to the sooty exhaust fumes of river traffic – contribute significantly to the dismal visibility, all the more disheartening in an area of exceptional natural beauty. It struck me: this is what implausibly cheap consumer goods look like upstream in the supply chain, far beyond the horizon of cost-conscious consumers. The juxtaposition of local fishermen in tiny sampans bobbing around in the slip-stream of industry lends a Dickensian flavour to the scene – A Tale of Two Rivers – and a vivid reminder, were it needed, of the inequality challenge confronting not only the developing world but many advanced economies, too. As if to compensate for those dark satanic mills, dozens of new bridges that span the water have been designed with an aesthetical flourish rather than stolid functionality in mind.

As for the dam itself, which we reached at midnight on the third day and passed in four hours via a sequence of enormous locks, the audacity it expresses can have few equals in the world. As an aside, en route to China I met one of the challengers for the title of “world’s most audacious construction project” when stopping in Dubai for the weekend. On arrival, I made immediately for the top of the Burj Khalifa, at 828m and 160 stories the world’s tallest building by some considerable distance. Appropriately enough, it features prominently in the latest Mission Impossible movie. The eye-watering extravagance shouts engineering hubris, but it is no less beautiful for that.

In defence of Three Gorges Dam, unlike the Burj Khalifa it is hard to label it as nothing more than a vanity project. For starters, it is devastatingly ugly. A few key facts: (1) Mao Zedong visualised the dam in a poem penned in 1956, titled ““Swimming”:http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/poems/poems23.htm”; (2) its 18GW of hydroelectric power capacity is roughly equivalent to nine Hoover Dams; (3) were it operating in 1994 when construction began, it would have supplied around 12% of China’s power needs – but due to explosive demand growth it today represents less than 4% and is obviously declining each year; (4) the submerged area includes 13 cities, 140 towns, 1,352 villages, 657 factories & 30,000 hectares of cultivated land. Construction is ongoing: the latest addition to the scheme is a ship elevator into which the “smaller” vessels (typically passenger ships of up to 3,000 tons – everything is relative) will be lowered or raised the full length of the drop that separates upstream and downstream waters, thereby shortening the crossing time from four hours to thirty minutes and debottlenecking the main lock system.

Another hour downstream from the dam we disembarked at nondescript Yichang, from where a four hour white-knuckle bus ride whisked us to Wuhan, the most important city in Hubei Province. Together with Chongqing and Nanjing, Wuhan is one of China’s so-called “Furnaces” due to the sweltering summer climate endured by its 10 million residents. Its location at the confluence of the Yangtze and the Han rivers, dividing the city into three parts – Wuchang, Hankou, and Hanyang (hence the composite name) – brought to mind Pittsburgh, with which I later learned Wuhan is officially twinned. From Hankou to Wuchang on the short commuter ferry, I was impressed by the dozens of electric-powered bicycles and scooters crammed on board. A recent estimate placed China’s e-bike population at 120 million; I briefly imagined the scene were all of those zippy two-wheelers powered by noisy two-stroke petrol engines.

Moving on from Wuhan, the world’s fastest train south to Guangzhou averages 328km/h on the 968km journey, which annihilates comparable high-speed routes elsewhere in the world. The new Wuhan Station embarrasses many modern airports in terms of scale, passenger facilities, and physical beauty. A comparison with airports is apposite, since the station is situated some 50km from the city centre, thereby demanding close to an hour’s taxi ride in light traffic. This came as a surprise – and a disappointment – to a European brought up to believe that the great advantage of rail over air travel is the convenience of journeying from one urban centre to another. Still, I retain a conviction that rail travel is vastly less stressful and more enjoyable than flying.

Guangzhou, formerly known in the West as Canton, is regarded as China’s third city after Beijing and Shanghai. If this status gives Guangzhou an inferiority complex, you wouldn’t know it. The city’s proximity to Shenzhen and Hong Kong – soon to be connected with yet another high-speed rail line – give it a significant competitive advantage. A stunning array of outlandish buildings have sprung up, including a striking waterfront opera house, all serviced by a spanking new – and already insanely busy – underground metro system. Beijing’s development received an additional kick from the 2008 Olympics, while Guangzhou experienced a similar stimulus from the 2010 Asian Games, recognised as the second largest multi-sport event after the Olympics.

On leaving China from Guangzhou’s spotless – if mildly confusing – Baiyun International Airport, my overriding impression was that, despite everything I have read and experienced previously, it remains impossible to do justice in words to the sense of sheer momentum that exudes from this vast country of nearly 1.4 billion citizens, undertaking in two or three decades a transformation for which human history offers no precedent. The industrial development that took more than a century in the US and Europe – with only a few hundred million citizens to consider – can offer some useful pointers, but direct analogies quickly break down due to the vastly different context in which humanity finds itself today. For one thing, when E.L. Drake struck oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1859, we hadn’t the faintest idea of the full consequences of embarking on a socio-economic development trajectory underpinned by two of our most primitive discoveries: fire and the wheel.

Where does it all lead? Whether we like it or not, China’s future is our future. My colleague Dirk Visser at CSPL South Africa begins his excellent systems pressures overview by referring to the movie The Dark Knight, in which the Joker sums up his relationship with Batman: “This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object”. China creates an overwhelming illusion of the proverbial unstoppable force. Is nature – or the hard, non-negotiable biophysical limits that nature imposes on all earthly life – the immovable object? Apparently not, yet.

Weird, Strong, Adaptable

info@sustainability.com (Sustainability) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 18:50:44 +0000

I mentioned in an end 2011 article for GreenBiz, on Simon Mainwaring’s view of Contributory Consumption, that I’d had the opportunity to visit the LIVESTRONG Foundation HQ in Austin, TX as part of a series of Sustainable Life Media meetings last month hosted by Dell.

I was in Texas while COP 17 was playing out in Durban, so it may be the coincidence of timing leading me to make a connection, but I have been pondering similarities between society’s struggles to defeat cancer to the battle against global warming. Is there a lesson here?

War on Cancer

2011 marked 40 years since President Nixon signed the National Cancer Act of 1971, generally regarded as the beginning of the war on cancer.

Fortieth retrospectives on the occasion frequently mentioned two things. First, that no one thought we’d go four decades without a cure. And, second, that part of the challenge has been the growing recognition that it may have been a mistake ever to have thought of cancer as a single disease. Much common wisdom now perceives endless cancer variations, each affecting those afflicted differently, leading some researchers to argue we’d be better labeling cancer – really cancers – something like ‘weird cells’ until our understanding deepens to a point when we fully are able to distinguish between deviations.

Winning Battles

If cancer is so diverse, and a cure or cures likely still distant, how do we help patients in the critical interim?

Enter LIVESTRONG. In an arena dominated by science-based organizations doing (crucial) work to find cures, it focuses on helping people deal with the complexity of the disease and living with it. One of things the foundation does is provide Navigation Services, “to help people affected by cancer learn what to expect during the cancer experience, learn what questions to ask and connect people to appropriate resources.” LIVESTRONG Navigation Services help people understand the affliction and how to keep living while battling to survive it – regardless the current state of the larger war on cancer. Advice covers relatively mundane but essential issues like transportation and childcare, as well as the challenge of selecting treatments and understanding insurance coverage (and options in its absence).

Further, LIVESTRONG is most focused on specific populations including adolescents and young adults – people ranging about 15-35. This is due to the simple reason that while mortality rates among children and more mature adults have dropped radically, survival rates for teens and younger adults have barely budged. More likely to die from cancer, this group needs more and different help.

From Cancer to Climate

Full points to any of you who thought of Thomas Friedman in a climate context when I mentioned ‘weird cells’ as a cancer descriptor above – for some time he’s suggested ‘global weirding’ would better describe climate impacts (and help refute deniers) than ‘global warming’, as, for example, changing weather patterns will deliver their share of harsh winters and snowstorms as temperature patterns change. And kudos too if you recognized LIVESTRONG’s Navigators help people develop appropriate adaptation strategies, orienting on the needs of particularly at risk groups.

Reluctant Adaptation

Up to about COP 15 in Copenhagen, climate mitigation strategy dominated to a point where discussion of adaptation was near verboten. But mitigation is proving to be to climate what research towards a cure is to cancer; essential, but not anything we can count on short term. So adaptation has come increasingly into focus; if not necessarily preferred, its essentiality breeds reluctant embrace, especially when we consider the billions of climate innocents yet unborn who will inherit the greatest challenges of adaptation and have to live new lifestyles shaped by climatic shifts and whatever mitigation strategies are eventually adopted.

Cal-Adapt

If LIVESTRONG models an adaptation approach for cancer, extending and improving lives while science seeks cures, Cal-Adapt is a prototype for the kind of climate adaptation tools needed to transition through ‘global weirding’ until GHG emissions peak and decline.

Developed in response to the 2009 California Climate Adaptation Strategy by UC Berkeley’s Geospatial Innovation Facility with support from the California Energy Commission’s Public Interest Energy Research (PIER) Program and Google.org, Cal-Adapt “synthesize[s] existing California climate change scenarios and climate impact research and...encourage[s] its use in a way that is beneficial for local decision-makers.”

While the target population – California policy-makers and residents – can’t be described as the most vulnerable, they will certainly suffer climate impacts. Cal-Adapt informs and literally illustrates likely impacts, showing in local profiles on a map of California what will happen in specific places in terms of temperature, sea level, snowpack and wildfires based different carbon emissions scenarios. The tool makes it personal: typing in my own Northern California address tells me my community should be particularly concerned about temperature and sea level rise, with anticipated average annual temperature rising from 1.8 to 3.0 degrees Celsius this century, while the local land area vulnerable to a 100-year flood event nearly doubles. And, bad news, those are the projections for a low emissions scenario.

War on Climate – and Battles Meantime

As surprised and disappointed as researchers have been to arrive at the 40th anniversary of the war on cancer without a cure, those campaigning to stop global warming can’t believe that two decades since the Rio Earth Summit and fifteen years since adoption of the Kyoto Protocol we not only have failed to produce binding caps on GHG emissions, but continue to see ongoing debate on climate science itself.

As chronicled here by SustainAbility Chair Geoff Lye, while COP 17 in Durban delivered more than most anticipated towards “securing a long-term mitigation roadmap,” this was against incredibly low expectations, and even a dramatic increase in resolve and action among policy-makers and business leaders will leave us in a situation where widespread climate adaptation strategy development and deployment is required. LIVESTRONG and Cal-Adapt hint at the kind of resources – weird, strong and adaptable – needed in the decades ahead. I hope the maxim on flattery bears out, and that they have many imitators soon.

Ten Words. Ten Trends for 2011.

info@sustainability.com (Sustainability) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 10:00:00 +0000

1. Transitions

In a year that saw an Arab Spring take hold and unseat entrenched autocrats in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya (TBD on Yemen and Syria), the withdrawal of the last American troops from Iraq, a European Union on the brink of transformative change (and potential collapse), a titan of technological (and economic) innovation pass away, and the growing acknowledgement (in the form of the Occupy protests), that the entanglement of the American political and financial system is a Faustian bargain that must be actively fought and protested against, the theme of transition feels all too apt.

So too in the sustainability field, where in a world of seven billion inhabitants and growing, the five most urgent issues on the sustainability agenda are all perceived less urgently than they were in 2009. It is no surprise that stakeholders like generation Y, responsible for catalyzing many of 2011’s most unlikely transitions, are no longer seen as “nice-to-engage” on the sustainability agenda, but an imperative.

2. Leadership

There is insufficient leadership. Everywhere. This is evident in President Obama’s unfavorable ratings (though the White House still looks like a giant compared to the historically low approval of Congress). It is evident in the desperate wrangling and constant specter of collapse in the EU. It is evident in the global community’s penchant – despite glimmers of ending the gridlock at COP 17 – to kick the can down the road on combating climate change. And it’s evident in Occupy protests around the world, which cast business not as a steward of sustained global prosperity, but rather an untrustworthy instigator of rising inequality, unemployment and short-term thinking. Is it any surprise that one of the most heralded attributes of Occupy is its insistence on being leaderless?

The clarion call for new energy and leadership is being sounded at an increasing clip, and while it aims to reinvigorate traditional forms of leadership, there is also the cautious acknowledgement that we’ve entered into a “new normal” where mayors and city councils, multi-sectoral coalitions (see Alliances trend), and social entrepreneurs fill the gaps.

3. Alliances

Perhaps in reaction to the uncertainty of ongoing transitions and the disillusionment with traditional forms of leadership, we’ve seen an uptick in alliances forged to tackle the increasing scale and complexity of sustainability issues. But these aren’t just the alliances we’ve come to expect (those from high-profile businesses and NGOs collaborating on an areas of mutual interest/concern). No, we’ve seen “enlightened competition” from hardened foes in the auto sector, who are partnering to develop hybrid powertrain systems (Ford and Toyota) and new fuel cell technology (GM and BMW). We’ve seen a steel trade association take up the mantle of environmentalists advocating for an LCA-based global fuel standard. We’ve also seen nontraditional coalitions form on the issues of toxics (footwear and apparel brands collaborating to eliminate toxic discharge from their supply chains by 2020), clean energy (ConocoPhillips, NRG Energy and GE Capital’s $300 million joint venture) and climate change adaption (the cross-sectoral Partnership for Resilience and Environmental Preparedness), to name a few.

In talking about the pressing nature and scale of the issues our society faces today, there is a realization that it’s simply impractical to wait for the genius of one company’s R&D team or a particular NGO’s issue expertise and influence to develop the kind of breakthroughs that are required to advance sustainable development. Systemic change, the kind increasingly called for on a wide range of issues, requires strength in numbers and friends in unlikely places.

4. Øwnership

Access over ownership, collaborative consumption, recommerce – or whatever your favorite term for the “sharing economy” may be – isn’t a trend germane to 2011; it’s been steadily (and stealthily) building over the last few years, spurred by a weak economy, consumers on a constant quest for what’s next, and the “eco-status” that comes from sharing, not buying (among other reasons). Signs of this trend are everywhere and one of the most visible is likely occurring in a city near you, as the urban bike renaissance continues to be spurred by bikeshare programs from Washington D.C. to Hanghzhou, China.

But 2011 is a watermark year for this reason: big business finally (and in some cases, reluctantly) embracing it. Look at car sharing. Industry leader Zipcar (which became profitable for the first time in 2011) began a partnership with Ford on US college campuses, while Volkswagen and BMW announced plans for their own car-sharing schemes. Meanwhile, General Motors made an even more ambitious entry to the space, partnering with peer-to-peer car-sharing company RelayRides to let drivers rent out their cars by the hour. Witness also the Common Threads Initiative, launched by eBay and Patagonia, which asks customers to not buy something if they don’t need it, and if they do buy, to repair what breaks, and resell their old items. Even Amazon’s decision to allow Kindle users to loan books to friends and family is an example of businesses beginning to get more comfortable with and experiment around sharing. And while a promising development, experimentation without the intent to fully integrate is not an end in itself; our November survey with GlobeScan indicated that businesses have a duty to offer sustainable product lines instead of, rather than in addition to, unsustainable ones.

5. Transparency

“You never want to hear about the guys who run the supply chains for multinational companies. When you do, usually it means something really bad has happened.” This quote from Bob Ferrari, a leading supply-chain consultant, may be all too true for Intel, which cut its revenue forecast for the fourth quarter by 7%, and more ominously, Toyota, which halved its profit forecast for 2011. Indeed, the traditionally opaque supply chain came out of the shadows this year when the twin disasters in Japan and historic flooding in Thailand spelt delays and disruption in the lean, globalized supply networks that have become the norm since Toyota itself popularized them.

In spotlighting potential emerging trends earlier this year, we wrote that “more awareness (across a greater breadth of stakeholders) of the disparate parts and components that make up our favorite products should lead to greater demands for transparent supply-chain practices.” But this “new normal” of transparency transcends the supply chain, important as it may be. At one of the four business roundtables we convened this year, the notion of transparency historically being a response to crisis was found to be at least an incomplete, if not outdated view. Rather, “there was a sense that more organizations now understand how regular and proactive transparency begets trust, so are more committed to consistent, proactive disclosure[.]” Speaking of…

6. Trust

National governments are seen as being the least equipped to advance sustainable development, and a first step to that transformation, trust, has cratered in a stream of government scandals across the globe. From the litany of UK controversies (News of the World’s phone hacking, UK Defense Secretary Liam Fox’s resignation, Bell Pottinger and the influence of lobbyists) to China’s bullet train crash cover-up to the constant specter of corruption in India (resulting in “watershed” demonstrations across the country), we’ve seen the products of mistrust from our elected officials. Businesses and their neglect – or what’s more often the case, sidestepping – of ethics have come into sharper focus too in our current economic malaise. When two major banks this year received record fines for taking advantage of the elderly, it’s hard to disagree with the need to occupy Wall Street.

While trust is a basic tenet to the sustainability agenda, it’s also a catalyst to another trend we’re highlighting this year, alliances. Since there is every expectation that nontraditional (and in some cases, uncomfortable) collaboration will be critical to rapid development and scaling of sustainable solutions, trust will be the essential currency to breaking down traditional mindsets and building up ambitious coalitions.

7. Campaigns

You need search neither far nor wide for examples of mass mobilization in 2011, but lost in the shuffle of the spontaneous, viral and breathtaking displays of people power from Tunisia’s toppling to India’s anti-corruption assault to Russia’s response to election rigging was the welcome re-emergence of the campaigning NGO. Whether through coalition (the range of environmental NGOs, such as 350.org, that mobilized successful protests against the XL pipeline), partnership (NRDC and EDF’s “What’s your number” campaign) or the strength of their own constituencies (Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign and Greenpeace’s string of victories from “zero discharge” to “unfriend coal”), NGOs reclaimed and rejuvenated their activist spirit, a critical tool arguably overshadowed in recent years by a pure-play strategy of business engagement.

And while no company would publicly ask for direct confrontation, in the context of our business roundtables this year, we heard some companies express an appetite for more of this type of pressure: “Without agenda-driven NGOs, or proactive, but restrictive policy, it is harder for internal changemakers at companies to make the case for course correction.” So here’s to 2011 being the (re)start of pragmatic collaboration on areas of shared interest and relentless campaigning on issues that aren’t.

8. Limbo

The renewables (particularly solar) industry achieved high watermarks in a number of indicators this year: in the US, there were more domestic solar installations completed in the third quarter of this year than during all of 2009; in Germany, after Angela Merkel announced the country would close all of its 17 nuclear reactors by 2022, the biggest solar market in the world (and the third largest wind market) placed an “all-in” bet that it could scale its renewables portfolio to make up a large portion of the nuclear gap; and, in China, the latest five-year plan began with the ambition that after 2015, renewables will have reached cost parity with conventional domestic forms of energy.

But that narrative does not include the UK government’s plan to prematurely halve the popular feed-in tariff scheme for solar, putting the industry’s sustained success in question. It does not include the blowback from the solar firm Solyndra’s bankruptcy, which may engulf future US government incentives to advance clean energy after year’s end. And it certainly does not tell the story of how many of the biggest names in solar manufacturing have lost more than two thirds of their value this year as a result of what some commentators have called “a toxic mix of oversupply, falling prices, low-cost Asian competition and lower government subsidies.” The events of 2011 have put the future of (and namely government support for) solar and other renewable energy technologies in limbo in 2012.

9. Personal

Time’s Person of the Year is the Protestor, and while it is difficult to argue with the impact of people-powered protests in the Arab world, Europe and the US in 2011 (see also Campaigns), 2011 also witnessed the power of the personal. The sustainability agenda – stalled and maybe even regressing in perceived urgency – learned a thing or two from the impact people, place and personalization was having across the globe. The XL pipeline – a proposed major supply artery of Canadian tar sands oil through America’s heartland – was halted, as much by a well-organized campaign about GHG emissions outside the White House as by ranchers in Nebraska worried that a spill along the pipeline would devastate their livelihoods. And while the story of Japan’s earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster strained the country’s energy grid, the unabashedly large-scale character of this challenge was met by the ingenuity and national pride of Japanese citizens who turned lights on only when they needed to and chose shorts instead of business slacks to avoid using air conditioning.

It should not be understated that for as much as mobile technology and social media spurred previously unfathomable change in the Arab Spring or Occupy Wall Street protests, each relied at least equally on a physical, visible meeting place in the heart of the city. So, in recognizing the global and national inertia in advancing sustainability and the potential of the personal, let’s ask ourselves in 2012, where is the “Tahrir Square” of water scarcity, the “Zuccoti Park” of climate change?

10. Stranded

Stranded – as in, the 80% of the global fossil fuel reserves that would be stranded financial assets if we were to avoid breaching the 2ºC limit (increasingly backed by legislation, such as historically large emitter Australia’s new carbon tax). Stranded – as in an IEA report that ominously declares that the next five years will be critical to whether the global community can hold climate change to safe levels or if the chance of combating global warming will be “lost forever.” Stranded – as in the cogently frightening quarterly letters from Jeremy Grantham, founder and chief strategist of asset manager GMO, on how sustainability issues will affect the investment landscape narrowly, and the human species writ large. As Grantham writes, “modern capitalism attributes no material cost to damage that occurs far into the future. Our grandchildren and the problems they will face because of a warming planet with increasing weather instability and, particularly, with resource shortages, have, to the standard capitalist approach, no material present value.”

While COP 17 in Durban certainly did not produce the life raft hoped for in 2011, it kept the rescue boat in sight, i.e. “the most complex political negotiations ever attempted remain[d] intact, with all 194 Parties – including the world’s largest absolute emitter, the world’s fastest growing emitter, the world’s largest per capita emitter, and the world’s largest historical emitter – committed to negotiating by 2015 a legally-binding deal to cut emissions that will enter into force by 2020.”

Stranded – but still with a decent shot at survival.

Moving from Mindless Consumption to 'We First'

info@sustainability.com (Sustainability) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:22:45 +0000

I was in Austin last week for a Sustainable Life Media (SLM) double-header. First a meeting of the Sustainable Brands Advisory Board, then the SLM Corporate Members meeting.

Hosted with aplomb by Dell, sessions included a tour of the Dell Social Media Command Center (a fascinating, real-time window into what everyone, everywhere is saying about their Dell experience), and an inspiring visit to the new LEED Gold certified offices of Lance Armstrong’s LIVESTRONG Foundation, with both proving there is more going on in Austin than music, football and great Tex-Mex like Guero’s (though those are fine too, with Guero’s servings proving again that everything is bigger in Texas).

For everything packed into the two days, I left thinking about a presentation by Simon Mainwaring, the best-selling author of We First and founder of the social branding consultancy of the same name. We First is “committed to helping brands build communities, profit and positive impact.” This is, of course, hard to oppose, but I am interested in what We First might accomplish because Simon brings unique chops to the task.

He was an absolute advertising insider – the former Nike creative writer at Wieden and Kennedy, and previously the worldwide creative director for Motorola at Ogilvy. His work has been honored at the Cannes Advertising Festival and elsewhere. Is he poised to use We First and the media platforms he’s seized at The Huffington Post, Fast Company and like to take social or sustainability branding to new heights?

From Cause-Related Marketing…

Simon’s clear on one thing – he is not about expanding or extending historic cause-related marketing practices, which he sees having been plagued by shortcomings including: limited fund generation for the organizations associated with the causes; weak executive support; and impure motives (more greenwash than actual commitment to cause).

… to Contributory Consumption

In Austin and in writing like this blog here, Simon argues consumers are now equipped, by connecting their values and the ability to link them to campaigns and behavior change using social media, to force companies to “accept a far greater degree of responsibility” and to “recognize that they have a moral and ethical duty of social responsibility.” If future corporate profit will be linked to a higher purpose than shareholder return, and companies are at risk if they do not do this, can they get ahead of the curve?

Simon Says

According to Mainwaring, corporations will thrive when they: better account (and pay) for externalities; actively help build societies where prosperity is broadly shared; adequately serve poor as well as rich markets, and; accept and embrace the fact that narrow capitalist self-interest is incompatible with the “complex, global, interconnected world” in which we now live.

Contributory consumption marries the best of cause-related marketing with growing consumer desire to align their values with their purchases and the new ability of social media to build community. Simon believes it will help corporations demonstrate goodwill and engage stakeholders more powerfully than ever before, and that corporations plus consumers can become a force for good via this model.

Too Good To Be True?

To my ears, contributory consumption first sounded likely to be a cause-related marketing redux in spite of intentions and far-fetched. But Simon’s been gathering evidence that this new archetype is already flourishing, which convinced me to take a closer look.

Contributory consumption prototypes include: The Nike-LIVESTRONG partnership – who’d have believed what a yellow wristband might mean to people living with cancer, survivors and the people who love them, or the power of democratizing philanthropy given the $1 price point. Almost anyone can afford to participate and visibly support – and connect to both Nike and LIVESTRONG in the process.

Howard Schultz and Starbucks are making waves now with the Starbucks founder’s Upward Spiral platform asking people to withhold campaign contributions until elected officials “face our nation’s long-term fiscal challenges with civility, honesty and a willingness to sacrifice” and the corporation’s Create Jobs for USA, which steals a page from the LIVESTRONG handbook by fundraising on the back of wristband sales in Starbucks stores, and then using the money for capital grants to Community Development Financial Institutions.

And there are experiments emerging which are unaffiliated with any particular brand – until the consumer makes the connection. Using socialvest, as consumers shop at any one of 600+ plus retailers, they accrue a percentage of their expenditure in a giving account from which they can make donations to any of more than 1.5 million different causes. There might be a choice editing issue here (!), but it beats just shopping.

The examples don’t end with the list above. Consider 1% for the Planet and its pledge to ‘Keep Earth In Business’ and ‘s ‘Designed to Help Eliminate AIDS’ mantra. Imperfect, but learning and evolving as they go, these models are quietly helping lead a revolution exploring if and how we can make base consumption meaningful.

‘Tis The Season; Will 2012 Be The Year?

The holidays are upon us, for many meaning some degree of consumer frenzy. If Simon’s theory is right, this will be a breakout season for contributory consumption, and there will be a growing expectation that a portion of your spend – every spend – have purpose.

Simon believes that consumers and brands together can create campaigns capable of addressing the world’s greatest challenges. He predicts ongoing transformational growth in social media, crowdsourcing and collaboration tools will underpin this.

Whether you believe and hope he’s right, or fear he might be and want to mitigate risk, if the language of contributory consumption is foreign to your organization, 2012 is the year to build fluency.

This post first appeared as part of SustainAbility’s Changing Tack blog series on GreenBiz.com.

SustainAbility Releases Findings from Stakeholder Consultation on Roadmap to Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals

info@sustainability.com (Sustainability) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:00:12 +0000

Today, SustainAbility, Inc. released the findings from its consultation of select stakeholders regarding the draft roadmap developed by six footwear and apparel brands to eliminate the discharge of hazardous chemicals from their supply chains by 2020.

The brands – adidas Group, C&A, H&M, Li Ning, NIKE, Inc. and PUMA, together published Joint Roadmap: Toward Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals on November 18, 2011. With the publication, the brands announced a period of stakeholder consultation to gather feedback that they believe will result in a stronger roadmap and help the industry realize this ambitious goal. The brands asked SustainAbility to conduct this consultation on their behalf.

Between November 2011 and January 2012, SustainAbility captured perspectives through phone interviews and email feedback from over 30 individuals representing a variety of stakeholder groups including academia, chemical companies, environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs), other apparel brands and regulatory agencies. SustainAbility conducted this consultation anonymously, but has identified the individuals and organizations with whom we consulted in the Appendix.

The findings are not an exhaustive list of every point of feedback raised, nor do they represent consensus. Rather, the document reflects SustainAbility’s perspective on the topics that most frequently and prominently came up in phone conversations and email feedback.

Download and read the findings of the consultation process below. If you would like to share feedback on the roadmap or the consultation findings, please email ztdi@sustainability.com.

Survey: Profit incentive derailing sustainability

info@sustainability.com (Sustainability) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Business Green highlights some key elements of the latest GlobeScan/SustainAbility survey.

The results of the survey will feed into a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report on the business case for the Green Economy, due to be published later this year.

Read the entire article at BusinessGreen.com.

Financial Short-Termism a Major Obstacle to Sustainable Change in Business: Expert Poll

info@sustainability.com (Sustainability) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:50:00 +0000

Nairobi/ Paris, 26 January 2012: Financial short-termism represents a critical barrier to businesses’ transition to sustainability, according to a new poll.

The latest wave of The Sustainability Survey – GlobeScan and SustainAbility’s regular survey of attitudes across businesses, NGOs, academia and government – reveals that a very large majority (88%) of the 642 experts polled see pressure for short-term financial results as a barrier to businesses becoming more sustainable.

The survey, conducted in December 2011, asked experts to say whether they considered a range of factors as being barriers to increased sustainability by businesses. Although most of those polled identified multiple barriers, financial short-termism was seen as the most significant by some distance. The next most significant barriers were inappropriate regulations and low awareness of the business imperative, both cited by 65% of respondents. Low consumer demand was identified by 57% of respondents, followed by the lack of effective management tools (45%) and the lack of international standards (50%).

While financial short-termism was consistently identified as a barrier by large majorities of all groups, the survey revealed that experts’ views differed on the importance of other factors according to their sector.

Experts working in academia (56%) were much more likely to identify the lack of international standards as a barrier than those working in corporations (43%). Experts within academia were also more likely to blame low awareness of the business imperative for sustainability among business leaders (71%) than their corporate counterparts were (58%).

In contrast, experts within corporations were more likely to identify lack of consumer demand for green business practices, products and services as a barrier to sustainable transformation (66%) than other groups of experts, particularly those within NGOs (46%).

These latest survey findings will be featured in a forthcoming UNEP report on the business case for the Green Economy, to be published later this year.

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Executive Director, said: “The Green Economy analysis by UNEP and partners clearly outlines pathways towards growing the global economy, generating employment and combating poverty while keeping humanity’s footprint within ecological boundaries.

“This survey underlines that governments must play their part, national and internationally, in setting the standards and backing the smart policies needed to promote sustainability over extraction and degradation of the world’s natural resource base. It is happening, but not fast enough. Rio+20 in June offers an opportunity for governments to accelerate and to scale-up a better future for seven billion people,” he added.

GlobeScan President Chris Coulter commented: “Clearly, more work needs to be done to help business find ways to overcome financial short-termism as a barrier to corporate sustainability. It may be timely for a multi-stakeholder initiative to explore new thinking to tackle this major obstacle to facilitate the transition to sustainability.”

Jeff Erikson, Senior Vice-President at SustainAbility commented: “The experts in our poll are telling us that of the many factors that make a transition to sustainability difficult, impatience from shareholders is the most important. This implies that understanding and communicating the business case is critical. We are excited to be working with UNEP once again on their upcoming report, which will provide further support to the business community to make the case.”

Read the full press release at UNEP.org.

Rate the Raters cited in Tim Mohin's Top 10 Trends in CSR for 2012

info@sustainability.com (Sustainability) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 18:30:00 +0000

Tim Mohin mentions in its Top 10 Trends in CSR for 2012 blog, key findings from the SustainAbility’s Rate the Raters research program.

From the article:

The “Rate the Raters” report from SustainAbility.com found that more than 100 sets of ratings measure which companies are the most responsible.

Read the full article at Forbes

Mark Lee writes on Leadership for Sustainable Brands

info@sustainability.com (Sustainability) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I did not think about it before sitting down this evening (January 16, 2012), but to write about leadership on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is to feel one’s own limitations…

Read the full article…

Kyle Whitaker quoted on ways to offset 'conflict mineral' guilt

info@sustainability.com (Sustainability) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 10:08:00 +0000

“Conflict minerals” often end up in the most popular electronic gadgets. SustainAbility Manager Kyle Whitaker is featured in a BBC News article exploring how to offset ‘conflict mineral’ guilt.

From the article:

Whitaker said, “The funny thing about product boycotts is that it can be difficult to get your voice heard. If it is heard, it can be difficult to articulate the message clearly,.” More effective than making a non-statement by refusing to purchase an item is combining voices and resources to get a company’s attention. One way to do that is through socially conscious investments. The other is by letting companies know their products are in demand, and that conflict-free technology is important,he said.

Read the full article on BBC News.

Eco-labels: radical rethink required

info@sustainability.com (Sustainability) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:30:06 +0000

Heather Mak, manager at SustainAbility, blogs this week on Ethical Corporation. In the post, she shares key findings from the report Signed, Sealed… Delivered?, including a vision for why and how sustainability labels should focus more on actual company performance and have to evolve to better deliver value to the businesses, consumers and other stakeholders who use them.

Read the full article at Ethical Corporation.

Behaviour Change Gets a Big Boost from Business

info@sustainability.com (Sustainability) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 10:47:31 +0000

Green Futures published by Forum for the Future reports on the growing trend for brands to offer incentives and rewards to encourage more sustainable behaviour from consumers.

From the article:

It’s a new application of an old idea, comments Frances Buckingham at consultants SustainAbility: “Companies have long embraced ‘choice architectures’ to optimise profits, [but] it’s a new idea to aim these techniques at sustainability”. The benefits for brands are better conversations with consumers about values – a great foundation for a long-term relationship.

Other brand nudges are aimed towards healthier lifestyles and stronger communities. Amazon Kindle allows purchasers to ‘loan’ books to friends to nudge them towards collaborative consumption, and US insurance giant Humana rewards customers who exercise.

Read the full article at Green Futures.

Newsletter > Social Activism and Rio+20, Collaboration vs. Engagement and more

info@sustainability.com (Sustainability) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 00:02:47 +0000

Our first newsletter of 2012 shares results of SustainAbility & GlobeScan’s most recent survey of sustainability experts, Jeff Erikson’s recent article on the current state and future of stakeholder engagement, and our round-up of the ten trends that most defined the sustainability agenda in 2011. Click here to view.

Also see other past updates here:

Sign up on our website to have future updates delivered directly to your inbox – either by joining Compass or just by giving us your email address at the bottom of our homepage.

GreenBiz on How to Become a Social Intrapreneur

info@sustainability.com (Sustainability) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 23:56:34 +0000

Guest contributor Nathan Springer kicks off a new series this week on GreenBiz exploring lessons in social intrapreneurship, or the art of creating change inside corporations and other large organizations. The initial post in the series briefly traces the evolution of thinking on the subject, including SustainAbility’s 2008 report, The Social Intrapreneur: A Field Guide for Corporate Changemakers.

Read the full article at GreenBiz.com.

Survey on Activism

info@sustainability.com (Sustainability) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 08:43:16 +0000

2011 welcomed the re-emergence of the campaigning NGO as civil society organizations reclaimed and reinvigorated their activist spirit. From relentless campaigning by 350.org against the Keystone XL Pipeline to the populist multi-channel campaign by Hugh’s Fish Fight to end discards of by-catch in Europe to Greenpeace’s string of victories from ‘zero discharge to ‘unfriend coal’ NGOs have once again found their voice and are effectively playing an important role holding business and governments to account.

In the latest poll from Globescan and SustainAbility, a panel of more than 600 global sustainability experts agree that society needs such activism to achieve meaningful progress and that the activist tactics that directly impact business value drivers are percieved as the most effective.

Download the full results for more insights on activism.

The Inescapability of Traceability

info@sustainability.com (Sustainability) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 10:29:00 +0000

Supply chain transparency and accountability is reshaping what consumers expect of apparel, IT and food companies. This white paper sets out our expectation that growing pressure on oil companies to be transparent about the origins of their products will lead to a new era where businesses, customers and consumers become more discerning in their fuel and energy choices.

For an alternative view on the value of investing in traceability please read Liz Muller’s blog on The True Cost of Traceability.

Please let us know your views on traceability by commenting below or by sharing your views on Twitter @SustAbility #traceability.

Signed, Sealed... Delivered?

info@sustainability.com (Sustainability) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 09:15:00 +0000

Signed, Sealed… Delivered? explores the value and challenges that businesses find in using certification and labeling as tools to improve economic, environmental and social outcomes across global value chains.

Certification, labeling and the standards-setting organizations behind them have been pioneers in building a more sustainable economy. For businesses, they provide a credible, consensus-set reference point for collective action, access to expertise and networks, and can spur demand for certified or labeled goods. But the very traits — governance and inclusiveness — that make consensus-based standards so useful as credible mechanisms for collective action also pose challenges for businesses seeking to move quickly and to differentiate themselves in the marketplace. And like any tool, certification and labeling have limits — including limits to scale.

We conclude that there is a need to deconstruct and evolve the old model that combines standards, certification and on-pack marks. Instead we urge a shift towards a new model based upon increasingly demanding and pre-competitive standards, above which brands compete, collaborate and partner with civil society to transform supply chains and consumer norms and behavior, and where civil society and government evolve more effective and efficient ways of holding business accountable.

Watch the summary video or download the full report below.

Please join the debate by commenting here on what you believe needs to happen next. Or join the conversation on Twitter @SustAbility #beyondlabels.

Survey on Sustainable Consumption

info@sustainability.com (Sustainability) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 12:23:54 +0000

Are we making adequate progress toward the goal of sustainable consumption? And, is it possible to achieve it in the context of continued economic growth?

In the latest poll from GlobeScan and SustainAbility, a panel of more than 500 global sustainability experts and practitioners believe that sustainable consumption is possible to achieve, but will require substantial changes in the way goods are made, sold and consumed. A majority of respondants think that businesses have a duty to offer sustainable product lines instead of, rather than in addition to, unsustainable ones. While experts mainly agree on the need to change how we sell and consume products, there are diverging views on whether we must rethink the prevailing model of economic growth as well.

Download the the full results below, and visit our blog for additional recent insight on consumption (here and here).

Survey on Key Challenges and Industry Performance

info@sustainability.com (Sustainability) — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 08:00:52 +0100

What are the most urgent challenges facing society today? And which of 17 industry sectors are doing the most effective job of managing the most urgent challenges?

To explore these questions and more, GlobeScan and SustainAbility surveyed sustainability experts and practitioners from 64 countries around the world.

Download the PDF below for the full results, and visit our blog for additional insights from Kyle Whitaker, Manager of SustainAbility.

Rate the Raters, Phase Four

info@sustainability.com (Sustainability) — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 09:30:00 +0100

In May of 2010, we launched a multi-phase research program entitled Rate the Raters, which aimed to shed light on the universe of corporate sustainability ratings and to influence and improve their quality and transparency.

Phases one, two and three explored the ratings landscape today, how ratings work, and where there is room for improvement. For phase four we elected to look forward, to offer our vision for the necessary future of ratings. Watch the video or download the full report to find out more.

While this is the final phase of the program, we wanted to end with a clear call to action: We invite all ratings organisations to respond publicly by 1 January 2012 to the same short set of questions we posed to the 21 raters with whom we worked during phase three.

In making this request, we are channeling the sentiment of the many stakeholders with whom we’ve spoken during the project, who want to see the same level of transparency from raters as we all expect from the companies they rate. The questionnaire is included in our report. We commit to compiling all responses and making them publicly available in the spring of 2012.

Watch the video or read the report now, and please join the debate by commenting below or sharing your views on Twitter (#RatetheRaters).

See our phase one, phase two and phase three reports for further background and context.

Appetite for Change

info@sustainability.com (Sustainability) — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 10:00:00 +0100

The global food system is under scrutiny for environmental impacts including habitat degradation, greenhouse gas emissions and freshwater use. Half the world’s farmers go hungry, while around a billion people are clinically obese. Demand for food is growing and yields are falling. Radical and rapid systemic change is required.

Appetite for Change was conceived to identify what change is needed, and the role the corporate sector must play in making it happen.

We interviewed a wide range of corporate leaders for this research, and many acknowledged that it is incumbent upon them to find ways to be part of a holistic solution. But they told us that the path forward is not clear. In response, Appetite for Change seeks to energize the debate by proposing a new agenda, to help food companies and non-corporate actors chart a collaborative course toward a sustainable food system.

Watch the summary video or download the full report now. Please join the debate by commenting here on what you believe needs to happen next.

To learn more about SustainAbility’s food and agriculture insight, or to engage us to consider how your company might lead and/or respond to food sector transformation, contact biringer@sustainability.com.

The Future of Energy

info@sustainability.com (Sustainability) — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 08:56:31 +0100

The crisis at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and subsequent public debates over the safety and future of nuclear power has given the world pause this spring, forcing us to reconsider the following question: what does a sustainable, low-carbon energy future look like?

To explore this question, and to find out what corporate sustainability practitioners should be doing in response, GlobeScan and SustainAbility surveyed sustainability experts and practitioners from 67 countries.

Watch the video below for our survey findings and for expert analysis from Jeff Erikson, Senior Vice President of SustainAbility.

Download the PDF below for the full results.

Keys to Transformative Leadership

info@sustainability.com (Sustainability) — Wed, 11 May 2011 19:28:10 +0100

Transformative sustainability leadership was the subject of GlobeScan and SustainAbility’s latest joint survey and research which culminated with a public webinar on May 4.

The Great Disruption

info@sustainability.com (Sustainability) — Tue, 10 May 2011 11:15:43 +0100

SustainAbility’s Frances Buckingham sits down with Paul Gilding – an independent writer and advocate on climate change, and former CEO of Greenpeace International and other NGOs – to discuss his new book and his optimism for humanity’s ability to successfully navigate, and be better off on the other side of, the Great Disruption.

Paul also contributed a guest article on SustainAbility’s blog in April.