Writer, Speaker, Academic and Poet – Purpose Inspired for a Better World
Extract from a presentation by Dr Wayne Visser at the Korea Social Responsibility Institute (KOSRI) 2012 conference in Seoul.
Continue watching: CSR 2.0: The Future of CSR — Part 3 (Stages of CSR)
Extract from a presentation by Dr Wayne Visser at the Korea Social Responsibility Institute (KOSRI) 2012 conference in Seoul.
Continue watching: CSR 2.0: The Future of CSR – Part 2 (The State of CSR)
Blog by Wayne Visser
Anyone who works in sustainable business or CSR will probably have cut their teeth on the classic (some would say infamous) case study of ‘Shell in Nigeria’. What makes it such a compelling case is that it has yet to reach any final resolution. Ever since Shell was tarred with the brush of bad publicity surrounding the execution in 1995 of environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa by the Nigerian government, it has struggled to regain its social license to operate.
My first direct encounter with Shell in Nigeria came a few years after the incident, when I was running KPMG’s sustainability practice in South Africa. In fact, KPMG’s sustainability practice in the Netherlands had worked closely with Shell to pioneer its triple bottom line reporting approach, and the KPMG Norway practice was working with Shell in Nigeria on sustainability reporting and environmental management.
Two things stick in my mind from that time. One was being rather puzzled by the failure of Shell Nigeria’s HSE (health, safety and environment) reports to mention the Saro-Wiwa fiasco, which was still very much at the forefront of protests and boycotts against Shell, both in the country and abroad. If ever there was an elephant in the room!
The second recollection was a trip to Nigeria by one of my team members to do an audit on Shell’s ISO 14001 system. When she returned, I was aghast to learn that, at one point, the Shell vehicle had been surrounded by an angry mob threatening violence, after which the team travelled to Shell sites by helicopter and with an armed guard.
I have subsequently visited Nigeria five times and had a chance to speak to many of those working on corporate responsibility in the country, including a number of Shell’s national sustainability managers. As a result, I am more convinced than ever that the case holds vital lessons for other companies in how to be more accountable in the 21st century.
Lesson 1: Perception is reality
Whether Shell was actually in any way complicit in Saro-Wiwa’s execution did not make any difference. The fact that they made a plea to the Nigerian government for clemency did nothing to change the public perception – shaped largely by activist NGOs like Greenpeace and organisations like The Body Shop – that Shell must be guilty of serious human rights and environmental abuses.
Lesson 2: If you lie with dogs, you wake up with fleas
One of the reasons that Shell was targeted was that it was (and continues to be) ‘in bed’ with the government, which today is a majority shareholder in the company. 95% of Shell’s revenue after costs goes to the Nigerian government. Rightly or wrongly, stakeholders believe that, given these close ties, Shell is little more than a puppet of a corrupt government.
Lesson 3: Beware the resource curse
Despite Nigeria’s vast natural wealth, the majority of its people remain poor. Shell paid $42 billion in revenues to the Nigerian government between 2008 and 2012. A further $5.2 billion was paid in royalties and taxes in 2012. Due to the greed and corruption of its politicians, very little of this money is spent on human development. Poor governance and transparency makes the economic and social contribution of companies as effective as moving around the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Lesson 4: Penalties for losing a social license to operate are high
Shell estimates that, of the 26,000 barrels of oil spilled in 2012, 95% was the result of sabotage and oil theft. Besides these serious economic and environmental impacts, the safety and security of Shell staff are also compromised. In 2012, two contractors were killed in an armed attack while assessing the remediation of an oil-spill site, and in 2010, 26 employees and contractors were kidnapped (down from 51 in 2009).
Lesson 5: Environmental damage is costly
Shell is installing equipment that will reduce gas flaring from its facilities at a cost of $2 billion, in addition to the $3 billion already spent to reduce flaring. In order to lessen its operational spills, Shell constructed a $1.1 billion replacement pipeline. At the beginning of 2012, there 316 sites in need of remediation from spills (they had cleaned nearly 80% by the end of the year).
Lesson 6: Trust begins with transparency
Shell actively promotes and participates in the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiaitve in Nigeria, in which all payments to government are publicly disclosed. Besides this, Shell as created a public website which tracks the company’s response to, and investigation and clean-up of, every spill from its facilities, whether operational or the result of sabotage.
Lesson 7: Communities expect more than promises
Shell uses a Global Memorandum of Understanding (GMoU) model (introduced in 2006) to formalise its community contributions. Communities identify their own needs, decide how to spend the funding provided by SPDC and its joint-venture partners, and directly implement projects. By the end of 2011, Shell had signed and implemented agreements with 290 communities, of which 30% are around their operations in the Delta. In 2011, 596 projects and $79 million was channelled through the GMoUs.
Lesson 8: Reward innovation and best practice
In 2012, Shell received recognition in Nigeria’s Social Enterprise Reporting Awards (SERA), run by Trucontact, for its $27 million Kobo Fund, which enables small Niger Delta contractors to access loans needed to finance the supply of goods/services to Shell. The company is also providing $6 million for the UN-led Global Alliance for Clean Cooking Stoves, which aims to supply 100 million homes by 2020.
Lesson 9: Go beyond philanthropy
Despite spending over £31 million on community projects in 2012, Shell’s commitment to sustainability in Nigeria is demonstrably focused on reducing the negative environmental and health impacts of their core business operations, while increasing of the positive economic and social benefits.
Lesson 10: Support better policy
In recent years, the Nigerian government has moved to legislate CSR, including a requirement to spend no less than 3.5% of gross annual profits per year on CSR. Shell would do well to oppose policy developments like this, which only serve to embed a philanthropic mode and act like a tax. Far better would be to encourage better legislation (and more importantly, better enforcement) on critical issues like labour rights, environmental management and anti-corruption.
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Visser, W. (2013) Oil on Troubled Waters: Can Shell Make Good in Nigeria? Wayne Visser Blog Briefing, 7 August 2013.
Blog by Wayne Visser
Waking dragon of the East
I first visited China in 2008, where I presented at the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) conference on Responsible Competitiveness, in Shanghai. I was also a judge for the Innovate China International MBA competition. My initial impressions were that – contrary to popular belief – in the medium to long term, China may very well set an example for other countries and companies in terms of sustainability and responsibility.
A clue to my optimism came from something that William Valentino, CSR Director for Bayer in China, said to me: ‘Above all else, China prizes stability. And stability, in turn, can only be maintained under conditions of social upliftment and environmental improvement.’ Despite labour conditions remaining a concern, human rights abuses are starting to become the exception rather than the rule, and I believe China’s sustained economic boom is doing far more social good than harm.
Reconciling its new-found addiction to growth with environmental constraints, however, may prove its most difficult challenge yet. Elizabeth Economy, author of The River Runs Black, has studied China’s environmental challenges in depth and believes the crisis they face is deep and intractable. The facts she cited when I interviewed her for The Top 50 Sustainability Books, were sobering, to say the least. She told me China has 20 of the world’s 30 most polluted cities in terms of its air quality. Seven hundred and fifty thousand people die prematurely every year in China because of respiratory diseases related to air pollution.
Water is another major challenge. China has only 25% of the world’s average per capita availability of water. Something like almost 30% of the water that runs through China’s seven major river systems and tributaries is unfit even for agriculture or industry, much less any form of drinking or fishing. Between five and ten cities will completely run out of water by 2050. China is roughly one-quarter desert, and the desert is advancing somewhere between 1,300 and 1,900 square miles per year. Furthermore, 10% of China’s agricultural land is contaminated with heavy metals and other contaminants.
People like Amory Lovins, founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, is more optimistic. He told me that China is the only country that’s cut its energy intensity over 5% a year for a quarter of a century. They are the world leader in distributed renewable sources of power and is the only country that has energy efficiency as its top development priority. To be sure, implementation is at an early stage. But, Lovins said, China has better leaders than we do, are more highly motivated and work harder. ‘For all these reasons, I think we can rely on China to lead the world out of the climate mess.’
William McDonough, co-author of Cradle to Cradle, shares these sentiments. He told me that while …
[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”download” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/blog_csrwire7_wvisser.pdf”]Pdf[/button] Yin and yang: Striving for sustainable harmony in China (blog)
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Visser, W. (2013) Yin and yang: Striving for sustainable harmony in China, Wayne Visser Blog Series, 31 July 2013.
Article by Wayne Visser
Without bold and effective leadership – at a political, institutional and individual level – we will fail to resolve our most serious social and environmental crises. This short article summarises some of the findings from my work with the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership[1]. To begin with, we distilled the following simple definition:
“A sustainability leader is someone who inspires and supports action towards a better world.”
There are many characteristics (traits, styles, skills and knowledge) that are associated with sustainability leaders.[2] Our research suggests that the following seven key characteristics are among the most important in distinguishing the leadership approach taken by individuals tackling sustainability issues:
Although it is unlikely that any individual will embody all seven characteristics of sustainability leadership, to give a flavour for each characteristic, they are illustrated below by observations from a selection of leaders, many of whom we have worked with and who demonstrate some of these qualities themselves …
[1] See for example, the Cambridge State of Sustainability Leadership publication series since 2011.
[2] See my paper with Polly Courtice for a more comprehensive review of these characteristics
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Visser, W. (2013) The 7 Habits of Sustainability Leaders, CSR International Inspiration Series, No. 12.
An interview with Wayne Visser by Ledelses TV, looking at inspiring leadership. The interview was conducted at the Who Cares Wins conference in Copenhagen on 16 April 2013.
Inspiring Leadership from Wayne Visser on Vimeo.
Article by Wayne Visser
An International Sustainable Business column for The Guardian
A few years ago, on one of my visits to China, I was invited to speak to a group in Shanghai called Women in Sustainability Action (Wisa). The organisation was set up by a former academic colleague, Jacylyn Shi, as a global network of professional women working in sustainability.
This got me thinking about the relationship between women and sustainability – and especially how this dynamic is playing out in China.
According to professor Kellie McElhaney, founder of the Centre for Responsible Business at University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, companies that empower women are more likely to be companies that act sustainably.
A research paper written by McElhaney and Sanaz Mobasseri found that businesses with more women on their board of directors are more likely to: manage and improve their energy efficiency; measure and reduce their carbon emissions; reduce their packaging impacts; invest in renewable power; improve access to healthcare in developing countries; have strong partnerships with local communities; offer products with nutritional or health benefits; proactively manage human capital development; offer transparent financial products; have anti-corruption policies and programmes; have a high level of disclosure and transparency; and avoid controversies such as accounting fraud, price fixing, criminal behaviour among top executives, controversial customer practices and insider trading.
But why is this? It’s a topic for hot debate and there are probably as many opinions as there are commentators. Do men have inherently unsustainable ways of acting in the world? Does testosterone fuel the exploitation of our planet and its people? Are women our best hope for creating a sustainable future.
Elle Carberry, co-founder and managing director of the China Greentech Initiative believes that women may be drawn to sustainability because of its social angle. “From all my 20 years in business, I have met more women in this area than in others [areas of business],” she says. “Be it in China or the United States.”
She adds: “It does strike me that women come to this with a view about society and business.
In China, women also appear to be playing an increasingly important role in sustainability and for one Chinese woman in particular, this “view about society and business” turned her into the wealthiest self-made woman in the world. Zhang Yin, also known by her Cantonese name Cheung Yan, is the founder and director of Nine Dragons Paper, a recycling company that buys scrap paper from the US, imports it into China, and turns it mainly into cardboard for use in boxes to export Chinese goods.
In 2006, she topped the list of the richest people in China and by 2010 her $4.6bn (£2.9bn) fortune placed her ahead of the likes of Oprah Winfrey and JK Rowling. She has said that she built her entire business empire on some simple advice that she received in Hong Kong in 1985: “Waste paper is like a forest – paper recycles itself, generation after generation.” …
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Visser, W. (2012) Women and Sustainability: Taking a Lead in China, The Guardian, 26 October 2012.
CSR International is partnering with Kaleidoscope Futures to create a 2012 Top Sustainability Leaders list, based on the surveyed opinions of CSR & sustainability experts from around the world – people like you!
There is only one question in the poll and making your selection should only take 2 minutes. Please only vote once. Thanks!
To register your vote, visit our Sustainability Leaders Poll page:
http://www.csrinternational.org/2012/07/16/sustainability-leaders-poll-2012/
Blog by Wayne Visser
Part 12 of 13 in the Age of Responsibility Blog Series for 3BL Media.
Margaret Mead once said, ‘The only person who likes change is a wet baby’, to which Hunter Lovins added ‘and the baby squalls all the way through the process.’ So change is never easy, especially on the big issues of sustainability. In thinking about this, I have found Richard Beckhard and David Gleicher’s Formula for Change rather useful: D x V x F > R. This means that three factors must be present for meaningful organisational change to take place. These factors are:
D = Dissatisfaction with how things are now;
V = Vision of what is possible; and
F = First, concrete steps that can be taken towards the vision.
If the product of these three factors is greater than R (Resistance), then change is possible. I have seen sustainability change efforts fail for all four reasons. Deep-seated resistance often exists because the benefits of the status quo to those in power are considerable. Sustainability initiatives, especially if they are integrated into the core business, are often seen as extra burden. For instance, an operations manager of a plant really doesn’t want the extra hassle of collecting emissions data for a sustainability report, or subjecting his staff and facilities to an audit.
Most often, I think, the dissatisfaction that we may feel with the state of the world or the company’s actions really isn’t widely shared enough. Jonathon Porritt, author of Capitalism as if the World Matters, after many years in the sustainability game (he started the UK’s Green Party and chaired the government’s Sustainable Development Commission among other things), told me: ‘Looking at people all over the world today, rich and poor world, they are not remotely close to a state of mind that would call for anything revolutionary. There’s no vast upheaval of people across the world saying, “This system is completely and utterly flawed and must be overturned and we must move towards a different system.” There isn’t even that, let alone an identification of what the other system would look like.’
Likewise, on creating a compelling vision, Porritt concludes that ‘we have not collectively articulated what this better world looks like – the areas in which it would offer such fantastic improvements in terms of people’s quality of life, the opportunities they would have, a chance to live in totally different ways to the way we live now. We haven’t done that. Collectively we’ve not made the alternative to this paradigm, this paradigm in progress, work emotionally and physically, in terms of economic excitement. We’ve just not done it.’ Taking first steps is something companies are generally much better at, especially picking the so-called ‘low hanging fruit’. But the reason these steps so often don’t get beyond the pilot or peripheral stage is because the other two factors – dissatisfaction and vision – are not strong enough.
Another way to think of change in a structured way is Peter Senge’s concept of the learning organisation, popularised in his book, The Fifth Discipline …
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Visser, W. (2012) Will Anyone Join Your Revolution? Wayne Visser Blog Briefing, 24 April 2012.
Article by Wayne Visser
Looking to the future, what is needed – and what is just starting to emerge – is a new approach to CSR, which I call Systemic CSR, or CSR 2.0. This is a purpose-driven, principle-based approach, in which business seeks to identify and tackle the root causes of our present unsustainability and irresponsibility, typically through innovating business models, revolutionizing their processes, products and services and lobbying for progressive national and international policies. I have identified 10 trends:
Trend 1 – In the future, we will see most large, international companies having moved through the first four types or stages of CSR (defensive, charitable, promotional and strategic) and practicing, to varying degrees, transformative CSR, or CSR 2.0.
Trend 2 – In the future, reliance on CSR codes, standards and guidelines like the UN Global Compact, ISO 14001, SA 8000, etc., will be seen as a necessary but insufficient way to practice CSR. Instead, companies will be judged on how innovative they are in using their products and processes to tackle social and environmental problems.
Trend 3 – In the future, self-selecting ‘ethical consumers’ will become less relevant as a force for change. Companies – strongly encouraged by government policies and incentives – will scale up their choice-editing, i.e. ceasing to offer ‘less ethical’ product ranges, thus allowing guilt-free shopping.
Trend 4 – In the future, cross-sector partnerships will be at the heart of all CSR approaches. These will increasingly be defined by business bringing its core competencies and skills (rather than just its financial resources) to the party, as Wal-Mart did with its logistics capability in helping to distribute aid during Hurricane Katrina.
Trend 5 – In the future, companies practicing CSR 2.0 will be expected to comply with global best practice principles, such as those in the UN Global Compact or the Ruggie Human Rights Framework, but simultaneously demonstrate sensitivity to local issues and priorities. An example is mining and metals giant BHP Billiton, which have strong climate change policies globally, as well as malaria prevention programmes in Southern Africa.
Trend 6 – In the future, progressive companies will be required to demonstrate full life cycle management of their products, from cradle-to-cradle. We will see most large companies committing to the goal of zero-waste, carbon-neutral and water-neutral production, with mandated take-back schemes for most products.
Trend 7 – In the future, much like the Generally Accepted Accounting Practices (GAAP), some form of Generally Accepted Sustainability Practices (GASP) will be agreed, including consensus principles, methods, approaches and rules for measuring and disclosing CSR. Furthermore, a set of credible CSR rating agencies will have emerged.
Trend 8 – In the future, many of today’s CSR practices will be mandatory requirements. However, CSR will remain a voluntary practice – an innovation and differentiation frontier – for those companies that are either willing and able, or pushed and prodded through non-governmental means, to go ahead of the legislation to improve quality of life around the world.
Trend 9 – In the future, corporate transparency will take form of publicly available sets of mandatory disclosed social, environmental and governance data – available down to a product life cycle impact level – as well as Web 2.0 collaborative CSR feedback platforms, WikiLeaks type whistleblowing sites and product rating applications (like the GoodGuide iPhone app).
Trend 10 – In the future, CSR will have diversified back into its specialist disciplines and functions, leaving little or no CSR departments behind, yet having more specialists in particular areas (climate, biodiversity, human rights, community involvement, etc.), and more employees with knowledge of how to integrate CSR issues into their functional areas (HR, marketing, finance, etc.)
Collectively, these trends reflect a scenario …
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Visser, W. (2012) Future Trends in CSR: The Next 10 Years, CSR International Inspiration Series, No. 11.