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Our Geophysical Experiment

Our Geophysical Experiment

Chapter by Wayne Visser

Extract from Landmarks for Sustainability

Quotes

I worry about climate change. It’s the only thing that I believe has the power to fundamentally end the march of civilization as we know it, and make a lot of the other efforts that we’re making irrelevant and impossible – Bill Clinton, former US President

Climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today, more serious even than the threat of terrorism” – Sir David King, former UK government chief scientific adviser

Climate change: It’s here. If we don’t react, war, pestilence and famine will follow close behind – R K Pachauri, Chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

If we follow business as usual I can’t see how west Antarctica could survive a century. We are talking about a sea-level rise of at least a couple of metres this century … What we have found is that the target we have all been aiming for is a disaster – a guaranteed disaster – James Hansen, US climate scientist and head of Head of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

Our “large-scale geophysical experiment” …

Scientists have long been aware of the earth’s extreme temperature variations, with the last major ice age ending about 10,000 years ago. However, in 1824 Jean-Baptiste Fourier discovered a global warming (or greenhouse) effect, and in 1861, the Irish physicist John Tyndall carried out key research on carbon dioxide (CO2) and heat absorption.

In 1896, Swedish and American scientists independently concluded that CO2 was the likely cause of global warming. By 1957, US oceanographer Roger Revelle was warning that humanity is conducting a “large-scale geophysical experiment”, while colleague David Keeling set up the first continuous monitoring of CO2 in the atmosphere, confirming year-on-year-rises.

Despite these early signs, it took until 1979 for the first World Climate Conference, organised by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), to state that “continued expansion of man’s activities on earth may cause significant extended regional and even global changes of climate”. This led WMO and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to establish a scientific advisory body – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The IPCC issued its First Assessment Report in 1990, finding that the planet had warmed by 0.5°C in the past century and would rise further by 0.3°C per decade in the 21st century, accompanied by global mean sea level rises of 6 cm per decade. Convinced that the world needed a global policy response, the UN established the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which 154 nations (including the US) signed at the Rio “Earth Summit” in 1992.

In 1995, the IPCC Second Assessment Report confirmed that concentrations of greenhouse gas reductions (GHGs) were continuing to increase, and that the socio-economic impacts of climate change were significant, while the UNFCCC began negotiations on an international agreement to limit the emission of GHGs. The result was the Kyoto Protocol, adopted in 1997, which: 1) set mandatory targets for emission reductions for the world’s 38 leading economies, and 2) proposed three flexible market mechanisms for achieving these reductions through carbon trading. The targets collectively amounted to a 5.2% global reduction in GHGs from these countries against 1990 levels by 2012.

Despite US opposition to the Protocol, momentum continued to build, with the EU launching its Emissions Trading Scheme for CO2 in 2005. In 2007, the UK’s Stern Review, prepared by former World Bank Chief Economist Sir Nicholas Stern, warned that tackling climate change will cost around 1% of global GDP, whereas the cost of not acting could be between 5% and 20%. Shortly thereafter, the IPCC released its 4th Assessment Report, concluding with 90% confidence that human activity is causing climate change. It seemed the tide was turning, in no small part thanks to former US Vice-President Al Gore, who received an Oscar for his movie, An Inconvenient Truth, and a Nobel Prize, shared with IPCC. This seemed to mark the end of denial and the beginning of urgent global action on climate change …

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[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”download” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/book_landmarks_chap3_climate.pdf”]Pdf[/button] Our Geophysical Experiment (chapter)

Related pages

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”info” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/books/landmarks-for-sustainability”]Page[/button] Landmarks for Sustainability (book)

Cite this chapter

Visser, W. (2009) Climate Change, In W. Visser & Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership, Landmarks for Sustainability: Events and Initiatives That Have Changed the World, Sheffield: Greenleaf.

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The Future of CSR Codes

The Future of CSR Codes and Standards

Article by Wayne Visser

In this piece, I look at the lessons we have learned so far (both positive and negative) and what part CSR codes and standards play in an emerging New Governance model. Let me start with what I think we’ve learned about CSR codes and standards over the past 30 years or so.

  • Codes can be a useful activist tool
  • Codes can help to generate consensus
  • Codes can embed incremental improvement
  • Codes can change industry sectors

There are also downsides to CSR codes and standards, which we have come to realise.

  • Codes create auditing and reporting fatigue
  • Codes create confusion in the market
  • Codes can be a mask for irresponsibility
  • Codes are no substitute for regulation

With the usual caveats that the future is unpredictable, it does seem to me that there are several trends in CSR codes and standardsthat indicate the direction of their evolution.

  • Principle-based codes will consolidate
  • Process-based codes will struggle
  • Performance-based codes will strengthen
  • Sector-, product-, issue- and geography-based codes will expand

My fundamental belief is that CSR codes and standards will not disappear, because they form part of an emerging new form of governance, based on a multi-stakeholder approach …

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[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”download” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/inspiration_csr_codes_wvisser.pdf”]Pdf[/button] The Future of CSR Codes (article)

Related websites

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”tick” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.csrinternational.org”]Link[/button] CSR International (website)

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”info” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/books/the-a-to-z-of-corporate-social-responsibility”]Page[/button] The A to Z of Corporate Social Responsibility (book)

Cite this article

Visser, W. (2009) The Future of CSR Codes and Standards, CSR International Inspiration Series, No. 6.

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CSR and the Financial Crisis

CSR and the Financial Crisis:

Taking Stock

Blog by Wayne Visser

The Scale of the Crisis

There is nothing small or trivial about this financial crisis. According to the Bank of England’s recent Financial Stability Report, governments worldwide have already pledged more than $7 trillion in loans, guarantees, capital injections, and other assistance in their coordinated effort to prop up the global financial system. And the ILO estimates the crisis will cost 20 million jobs by next year.

This is not the first financial crisis the world has seen over the past century. The worst, of course, resulted in the Great Depression in the 1930s. But there have been numerous others, all of which carried painful economic and human costs. For example, the crises inArgentina (1981-1990), South Korea (1997-1999) and Thailand (1997-2000) all cost more than 30% of those countries’ GDPs.

But even by historical standards, the 2008 crisis is BIG. In what’s been dubbed “Wall Street’s Red October”, the S&P 500 plunged 16.9%, or 198 points, for the month. That’s the worst-ever monthly point decline for the S&P 500. The Dow similarly dropped 14.1%, or 1,526 points. And the ILO estimates that the crisis will bring the total unemployed to more than 210 million for the first time in history.

The key difference is that, unlike the Asian and Latin American crises in the 1980s, this crisis is truly global. Some countries, like Iceland andPakistan, are threatened by bankruptcy. Others, like Japan, have been hit by huge volatility in the markets. And even the cash-rich, high-flyers like China are seeing their growth suffering as a result. But what does any of this have to do with corporate social responsibility (CSR)?

The Links to CSR

Irresponsible banking

I’d like to suggest a multi-level approach to this. At the first and most obvious level, we can say the financial crisis is a direct result of irresponsible banking. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, the number of sub-prime loans offered to risky borrowers increased more than 15 times since 1998. Essentially, the banks got greedy and compromised good banking practices of credit risk assessment.

Irresponsible financial markets

At another level, the crisis is the predictable consequence of irresponsible financial markets. Since the deregulation of the 1980s, the derivatives market has grown to around $600 trillion dollars, almost 10 times the value of global GDP. This speculative trading (which some call the “casino economy”) is meant to hedge risk, but it also increases the volatility and systemic risk of financial markets.

We would do well to recall economist John Maynard Keynes’ warning: “Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.”

Irresponsible corporations 

Others argue that the crisis is the inevitable consequence of irresponsible corporations. This is linked to the short-termism of shareholder value driven public companies …

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[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”download” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/blog_financial_crisis_wvisser.pdf”]Pdf[/button] CSR and the Financial Crisis (blog)

Related websites

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”tick” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.csrinternational.org”]Link[/button] CSR International (website)

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”tick” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/books/the-age-of-responsibility”]Link[/button] The Age of Responsibility (book)

Cite this blog

Visser, W. (2008) CSR and the Financial Crisis, Wayne Visser Blog Briefing, 4 November 2008.

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Canada 2008 Notes

09 October 2008

I had a very pleasant dinner at the wonderful “Fresh” vegetarian restaurant in Toronto on Tuesday evening. My friend and colleague, Prof Andrew Crane, and I met with Nai-wen Wong, a visitor from Taiwan, who is part of the CSR International network I run.

One of the stories from Nai-wen that I liked was how people in Taiwan are now being encouraged to bring their own chopsticks to restaurants, to save all the forests being cut down for disposable chopsticks. That sounds like a great environmental idea, with a cultural twist.

On Sunday, I was walking around Toronto Island Park when, to my unexpected surprise and delight, this guy on a Penny Farthing bicycle rode past me. The Penny Farthing – so called because of the relative size of the British penny next to the smaller farthing coin – was invented in the 1870s.

It got me thinking about our progress, or more accurately, lack of progress. For me, the Penny Farthing, which has hardly changed at all to become the modern bicycle more than 130 years later, is a perfect metaphor for our seeming lack of change in other areas.

I am thinking mostly about that other wheeled invention, the car. More specifically, the internal combustion engine car. The basic design has hardly changed over the past 100 years, even though we have tinkered to make it more efficient, safe and clean.

At one level, we might say that, like the bicycle, it’s because the basic design still works. So why change a winning formula? But does it really still work? Is spending hours in gridlocked traffic, or thousands dying in auto accidents, or pumping out pollution that causes asthma and climate change what “works”? Is that our definition of a winning formula?

But now we have hybrids and electric cars, I hear you say. True, and I am their biggest fan. They begin to solve some of the environmental and health problems, but they still keep us locked into the same basic design – a metal box, with an engine, on four wheels. Is that the best our fantasmagorical imagination can come up with?

A penny (farthing) for your thoughts, my dear …

11 October 2008

I’ve enjoyed a wonderful week in Toronto, with blue skies, lake views and Autumn leaves. It has me thinking about change. Would we appreciate autumn leaves as much if they were always always on display? Most likely not. It is the changes which help us to value life.

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The Long Tail of CSR

The Long Tail of CSR:

Achieving Scalability in Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility

Article by Wayne Visser

I recently read The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson and it started me thinking: What is the Long Tail of CSR? The Long Tail – named after the extended tail of a statistical distribution curve – is the idea that selling less to more people is big business. It’s the business model that has spawned the most successful companies of the Web 2.0 age. The Long Tail questions the conventional wisdom that says success is about generating ‘blockbusters’ and ‘superstars’ – those rare few products and services that become runaway bestsellers.

Anderson sums up his message by saying that:

  1. the tail of available variety is longer than we think;
  2. it’s now within reach economically; and
  3. all those niches, when aggregated, can make up a significant market.

He also notes that this Long Tail revolution has been made possible by the digital age, which has dramatically reduced the costs of customised production and niche distribution.

There are three enablers of successful long tail businesses, according to Anderson:

  1. democratising the tools of production (e.g. digi-cams, content editing software, blogging tools);
  2. democratising the tools of distribution (e.g. Amazon, eBay, iTunes, Netflix); and
  3. connecting supply and demand (e.g. Google, blogs, Rotten Tomatoes).

So how might this apply to CSR? To me, the Long Tail of CSR is all about extending the reach of CSR, and improving its ability to satisfy specific social and environmental needs. Let’s use Anderson’s enablers as a framework for thinking about this …

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[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”download” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/inspiration_long_tail_csr_wvisser.pdf”]Pdf[/button] The Long Tail of CSR (article)

Related websites

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”tick” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.csrinternational.org”]Link[/button] CSR International (website)

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”info” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/books/the-age-of-responsibility”]Page[/button] The Age of Responsibility (book)

Cite this article

Visser, W. (2008) The Long Tail of CSR: Achieving Scalability in Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility, CSR International Inspiration Series, No. 5.

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CSR Myths

CSR Myths:

Popular Misconceptions on Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility

Article by Wayne Visser

In an article published by Ethical Corporation, I set out to explode 7 myths about corporate sustainability and responsibility (CSR). Most of these myths exist as a result of the feeding frenzy that inevitably occurs every time the media has hunted down and sunk its teeth into one or other juicy story of corporate exploitation. The myths are also sustained, however, by whole legions of largely well-intentioned people who have vested interests in promoting their particular brand of the truth about CSR. The 7 myths are:

  1. Economic growth is not compatible with CSR
  2. Multinationals are the biggest CSR sinners
  3. Multinationals are the biggest CSR saviours
  4. Developing countries are anti-multinational
  5. CSR is the same the world over
  6. Developed countries lead on CSR
  7. Codes can ensure CSR …

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[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”download” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/inspiration_csr_myths_wvisser.pdf”]Pdf[/button] CSR Myths (article)

Related websites

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”tick” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.csrinternational.org”]Link[/button] CSR International (website)

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”info” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/books/business-frontiers”]Page[/button] Business Frontiers (book)

Cite this article

Visser, W. (2008) CSR Drivers: The Forces Shaping Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility, CSR International Inspiration Series, No. 3.

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CSR Drivers

CSR Drivers:

The Forces Shaping Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility

Article by Wayne Visser

In doing research for my chapter CSR in Developing Countries, published in The Oxford Handbook of CSR, I identified 10 drivers for Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility (CSR), which I summarise below.

National (or internal) drivers refer to pressures from within the country and include:

  • Cultural tradition
  • Political reform
  • Socio-economic priorities
  • Governance gaps
  • Crisis response
  • Market access

International (or external) drivers tend to have a global origin and include:

  • International standardization
  • Investment incentives
  • Stakeholder activism
  • Supply chain …

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[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”download” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/inspiration_csr_drivers_wvisser.pdf”]Pdf[/button] CSR Drivers (article)

Related websites

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”tick” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.csrinternational.org”]Link[/button] CSR International (website)

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”tick” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/books/the-world-guide-to-csr”]Link[/button] The World Guide to CSR (book)

Cite this article

Visser, W. (2008) CSR Drivers: The Forces Shaping Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility, CSR International Inspiration Series, No. 3.

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CSR Change Agents

CSR Change Agents:

Experts, Facilitators, Catalysts and Activists

Article by Wayne Visser

In research conducted for my PhD on CSR, I identified four types of Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility (CSR) change agents: Experts, Facilitators, Catalysts and Activists.

Each type represents a constellation of attributes. It is expected that any individual CSR change agent will embody elements of all of these types, but that the relative influence of each type will differ per individual. Hence, the dominant type can be thought of as a centre of gravity for each CSR change agent’s work, i.e. the mode of operating in which they feel most comfortable, fulfilled or satisfied …

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[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”download” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/inspiration_csr_change_agents_wvisser.pdf”]Pdf[/button] CSR Change Agents (article)

Related websites

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”tick” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.csrinternational.org”]Link[/button] CSR International (website)

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”tick” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/books/the-age-of-responsibility”]Link[/button] The Age of Responsibility (book)

Cite this article

Visser, W. (2008) CSR Change Agents: Experts, Facilitators, Catalysts and Activists, CSR International Inspiration Series, No. 2.

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CSR 2.0: The New Era

CSR 2.0:

The New Era of Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility

Article by Wayne Visser

The field of what is variously known as CSR, sustainability, corporate citizenship and business ethics is ushering in a new era in the relationship between business and society.

Simply put, we are shifting from the old concept of CSR – the classic notion of “Corporate Social Responsibility”, which I call CSR 1.0 – to a new, integrated conception – CSR 2.0, which can be more accurately labelled “Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility”.

The allusion to Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 is no coincidence. The transformation of the internet through the emergence of social media networks, user-generated content and open source approaches is a fitting metaphor for the changes business is experiencing as it begins to redefine its role in society. Let’s look at some of the similarities …

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[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”download” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/inspiration_csr_2_0_wvisser.pdf”]Pdf[/button] CSR 2.0: The New Era (article)

Related websites

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”tick” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.csrinternational.org”]Link[/button] CSR International (website)

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”info” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/books/the-age-of-responsibility”]Page[/button] The Age of Responsibility (book)

Cite this article

Visser, W. (2008) CSR 2.0: The New Era of Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility, CSR International Inspiration Series, No. 1.

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