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What Can Web 2.0 Teach Us About CSR?

What Can Web 2.0 Teach Us About CSR?

Blog by Wayne Visser

Part 6 of 13 in the Age of Responsibility Blog Series for CSRwire.

By May 2008, it was clear to me that the evolutionary concept of Web 2.0 held many lessons for CSR. At the time, I declared: ‘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.

Web 1.0

  • A flat world just beginning to connect itself and finding a new medium to push out information and plug advertising.
  • Saw the rise to prominence of innovators like Netscape, but these were quickly out-muscled by giants like Microsoft with its Internet Explorer.
  • Focused largely on the standardised hardware and software of the PC as its delivery platform, rather than multi-level applications.

CSR 1.0

  • A vehicle for companies to establish relationships with communities, channel philanthropic contributions and manage their image.
  • Included many start-up pioneers like Traidcraft, but has ultimately turned into a product for large multinationals like Wal-Mart.
  • Travelled down the road of “one size fits all” standardisation, through codes, standards and guidelines to shape its offering.

Web 2.0

  • Being defined by watchwords like “collective intelligence”, “collaborative networks” and “user participation”.
  • Tools include social media, knowledge syndication and beta testing.
  • Is as much a state of being as a technical advance – it is a new philosophy or way of seeing the world differently.

CSR 2.0

  • Being defined by “global commons”, “innovative partnerships” and “stakeholder involvement”.
  • Mechanisms include diverse stakeholder panels, real-time transparent reporting and new-wave social entrepreneurship.
  • Is recognising a shift in power from centralised to decentralised; a change in scale from few and big to many and small; and a change in application from single and exclusive to multiple and shared.

So what will some of these shifts look like? In my view, the shifts will happen at two levels. At a macro-level, there will be a change in CSR’s ontological assumptions or ways of seeing the world. At a micro-level, there will be a change in CSR’s methodological practices or ways of being in the world.

Macro Shifts

The macro-level changes can be described as follows: Paternalistic relationships between companies and the community based on philanthropy will give way to more equal partnerships. Defensive, minimalist responses to social and environmental issues are replaced with proactive strategies and investment in growing responsibility markets, such as clean technology. Reputation-conscious public-relations approaches to CSR are no longer credible and so companies are judged on actual social, environmental and ethical performance (are things getting better on the ground in absolute, cumulative terms?) …

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[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”download” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/blog_web2_csr_wvisser.pdf”]Pdf[/button] What can Web 2.0 teach us about CSR? (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. (2011) What Can Web 2.0 Teach Us About CSR? Wayne Visser Blog Briefing, 10 November 2011.

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Can We Break the Spell of CSR Curses?

Can We Break the Spell of CSR Curses?

Blog by Wayne Visser

Part 5 of 13 in the Age of Responsibility Blog Series for CSRwire.

Looking back, we can see that the 1990s were the decade of CSR codes and standards – from EMAS and ISO 14001 to SA 8000 and the Global Reporting Initiative. But these were just a warm up act compared to the last 10 years, when we have seen codes proliferate in virtually every area of sustainability and responsibility and all major industry sectors. So much so that in the A to Z of Corporate Social Responsibility, we included over 100 such codes, guidelines and standards – and that was just a selection of what it out there.

This spawning of CSR codes and standards is typical of Strategic CSR, emerging from the Age of Management. At its heart, this is the drive to relate CSR activities to the company’s core business (like Coca-Cola’s focus on water management) by turning these into formal management systems, with cycles of CSR policy development, goal and target setting, programme implementation, auditing and reporting.  All good and well, but where does this leave us?

My belief is that Strategic CSR – like its predecessors Defensive, Charitable and Promotional CSR – has brought us to a point of crisis. Specifically, all these approaches are failing to turn around our most serious global problems – the very issues CSR purports to be concerned with – and may even be distracting us from the real issue, which is business’s role causal role in the social and environmental crises we face. This failure is due to what I have called the three Curses of CSR 1.0, namely that it is incremental, peripheral and uneconomic. Let’s look at these briefly in turn.

Curse 1: Incremental CSR

One of the great revolutions of the 1970s was total quality management, conceived by American statistician W. Edwards Deming and perfected by the Japanese before being exported around the world as ISO 9001. At the very core of Deming’s TQM model and the ISO standard is continual improvement, a principle that has now become ubiquitous in all management system approaches to performance. It is no surprise, therefore, that the most popular environmental management standard, ISO 14001, is built on the same principle.

There is nothing wrong with continuous improvement per se. On the contrary, it has brought safety and reliability to the very products and services that we associate with modern quality of life. But when we use it as the primary approach to tackling our social, environmental and ethical challenges, it fails on two critical counts: speed and scale. The incremental approach to CSR, while replete with evidence of micro-scale, gradual improvements, has completely and utterly failed to make any impact on the massive sustainability crises that we face, many of which are getting worse at a pace that far outstrips any futile CSR-led attempts at amelioration.

Curse 2: Peripheral CSR

Ask any CSR manager what their greatest frustration is and they will tell you: lack of top management commitment. Translated, this means that CSR is, at best, a peripheral function in most companies. There may be a CSR manager, a CSR department even, a CSR report and a public …

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[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”download” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/blog_spell_curses_wvisser.pdf”]Pdf[/button] Can we break the spell of CSR curses? (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. (2011) Can We Break the Spell of CSR Pretenders? Wayne Visser Blog Briefing, 3 November 2011.

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Exposing the CSR Pretenders

Exposing the CSR Pretenders

Blog by Wayne Visser

Part 4 of 13 in the Age of Responsibility Blog Series for CSRwire.

“Industrialism created a limitless appetite for resource exploitation, and modem science provided the ethical and cognitive license to make such exploitation possible, acceptable, and desirable” – Vandana Shiva

Can Big Tobacco ever be responsible? British American Tobacco (BAT) have engaged in extensive stakeholder consultation exercises and, since 2001, their businesses in more than 40 markets have produced Social Reports, many of which have won awards from organisations as diverse as the United Nations Environment Programme, PriceWaterhouseCoopers and the Association of Certified Chartered Accountants. BAT has also been ranked in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, the FTSE Ethical Bonus Index and Business in the Community (BITC) Corporate Responsibility Index, and they funded Nottingham University’s International Centre for CSR.

Yet this is the industry where, in 1994, the CEOs of 7 of America’s largest tobacco companies[1] testified before the House Subcommittee on Health and the Environment of Congress, all denying that cigarettes are addictive. They lied under oath. And this is the business that, according to the World Health Organization, kills more than AIDS, legal drugs, illegal drugs, road accidents, murder and suicide combined.’ Of everyone alive today, 500 million will eventually be killed by smoking, and while 0.1 billion people died from tobacco use in the 20th century, ten times as many will die in the 21st century. Isn’t responsible tobacco an oxymoron?

Of course, it’s not just Big Tobacco. What about Big Oil? This is the industry that set up and funded the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) to lobby against the emerging consensus of climate science and policy development until it was embarrassed into disbanding in 2002. A 2007 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, entitled Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air, documented how ExxonMobil adopted the tobacco industry’s disinformation tactics, as well as some of the same organisations and personnel, to cloud the scientific understanding of climate change and delay action on the issue. According to the report, ExxonMobil funnelled nearly $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of 43 advocacy organisations that seek to confuse the public on global warming science.

Or what about BP? In 2000, the company reportedly spent $7 million in researching the new ‘Beyond Petroleum’ Helios brand and $25 million on a campaign to support the brand change. Greenpeace concluded at the time that ‘this is a triumph of style over substance. BP spent more on their logo this year than they did on renewable energy last year’. Antonia Juhasz, author of The Tyranny of Oil (2008), is similarly sceptical, claiming that at its peak, BP was spending 4% of its total capital and exploratory budget on renewable energy and that this has since declined. That’s even before we factor in the Texas City refinery explosion in 2005, or the catastrophic Gulf spill in 2010, or BP’s ongoing investments in the Alberta tar sands. Isn’t sustainable oil a contradiction?

While many of these examples – and I could cite countless more, from automotive, agricultural, chemicals and other industries – are a little more than the familiar toxic mix of old-fashioned dirty lobby tactics, many companies today in engage in far more subtle and seemingly plausible campaigns of misdirection – investing in environmental management systems, producing  …

[1] Philip Morris U.S.A., RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company, U.S. Tobacco, American Tobacco Company,  Lorillard Tobacco Company, Liggett Group, Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company

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[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”download” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/blog_csr_pretenders_wvisser.pdf”]Pdf[/button] Exposing the CSR Pretenders (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. (2011) Exposing the CSR Pretenders, Wayne Visser Blog Briefing, 27 October 2011.

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Sustainability Leadership

Sustainability Leadership:

Linking Theory and Practice

Paper by Wayne Visser & Polly Courtice

Abstract

The paper aims to create a clearer understanding of the nature of sustainability leadership and how it can contribute to transformational change. It does this by locating sustainability within the leadership literature, defining the concept of sustainability leadership, and presenting a model of sustainability leadership in practice. The model was tested with a sample of senior business leaders and refined in line with their feedback. The model presents insights on sustainability leadership in three areas: context, individual characteristics, and actions. The model is illustrated using quotes from senior business leaders that are focused on sustainability in their organisations.

Introduction

This paper is based on research conducted by the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership (CPSL), which works with business, government and civil society to build the capacity of leaders, both to meet the needs of their stakeholders and to address critical global challenges. The paper is an attempt to create a clearer understanding of the nature of sustainability leadership and how it can contribute to transformational change.

The Model of Sustainability Leadership that we have developed was corroborated by interviews with the following business leaders, conducted in 2010: Neil Carson, CEO of Johnson Matthey; Ian Cheshire, CEO of Kingfisher; Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electric; Philippe Maso, CEO of AXA; Jan Muehlfeit, Chairman of Microsoft Europe; Truett Tate, Group Executive Director: Wholesale, for Lloyds Banking Group; José Lopez, Executive Vice President: Operations and GLOBE of Nestle; and Sandy Ogg, Chief Human Resources Officer for Unilever. The paper and the model are illustrated by extensive quotations from these interviews.

Definitions and Theories of Leadership

De Vries (2001) reminds us that the Anglo-Saxon etymological root of the words lead, leader and leadership is laed, which means path or road. The verb means to travel. Thus a leader is one who shows fellow travellers the way by walking ahead. He also suggests that leadership – which focuses on the effectiveness of strategy – is different to management – which deals with the efficiency of operations.

Ian Cheshire (2010), CEO of Kingfisher, says “leadership is about getting people to go where they wouldn’t have gone on their own”. Rather more flamboyantly, management guru Tom Peters (1989) suggests leadership is about “discovering the passion, persistence and imagination to get results, to be able to find the Wow factor and to be able to think the weird thoughts necessary to learn and thrive in a disruptive age”.

The element of transformational change in Peters’ definition makes it particularly relevant to sustainability. We have a working definition of leadership, as follows:

“A leader is someone who can craft a vision and inspire people to act collectively to make it happen, responding to whatever changes and challenges arise along the way.”

In addition to definitions, there are also various theories on leadership and while it is not our intention to provide an exhaustive review of these, they do set a frame for sustainability leadership. Hence, we can distinguish three main approaches to understanding leadership …

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[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”download” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/paper_sustainability_leadership_wvisser.pdf”]Pdf[/button] Sustainability Leadership (paper)

Related pages

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”info” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/books/corporate-sustainability-responsibility”]Page[/button] Corporate Sustainability & Responsibility (book)

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”tick” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.cpsl.cam.ac.uk/”]Link[/button] Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership (website)

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”tick” new_window=”false” link=”http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1947221″]Link[/button] Social Science Research Network (website)

Cite this article

Visser, W. & Courtice, P. (2011) Sustainability Leadership: Linking Theory and Practice, SSRN Working Paper Series, 21 October 2011. Published on SSRN at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1947221

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Is Philanthropy a Smokescreen?

Is Philanthropy a Smokescreen?

Blog by Wayne Visser

Part 3 of 13 in the Age of Responsibility Blog Series for CSRwire.

“I believe it is my duty to make money and still more money and to use the money I make for the good of my fellow man, according to the dictates of my conscience.” —John D. Rockefeller Sr.

The Rockefeller story is a good one to introduce the Age of Philanthropy, not only because of John D.’s iconic status as a tycoon and philanthropist, but also because his life and views on charity embody much of the philanthropic attitudes that still prevail today in business. At the heart of the Age – and its chief agent, Charitable CSR – is the notion of giving back to society. Rather interestingly, this presupposes that you have taken something away in the first place. Charitable CSR embodies the principle of sharing the fruits of success, irrespective of the path taken to achieve that success. It is the idea of post-wealth generosity, of making lots of money first and then dedicating oneself to the task of how best to distribute those riches, by way of leaving a legacy.

In 1970, the respected US economist Milton Friedman published an article in the New York Times Magazine (13 September) entitled ‘The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Profits’. In it, he called the ‘doctrine of social responsibility’ a ‘fundamentally subversive doctrine in a free society’ and argued that ‘there is one and only one social responsibility of business – to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits, so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud’. As such, he came to define one end of the spectrum of opinion on CSR: the purist, stockholder (or shareholder) view, a view which was once again given an airing in the Wall Street Journals’ ‘The Case Against Corporate Social Responsibility’ article on 23 August 2010. Despite his hard-line view, Friedman does allow some concessions, saying:

“It may well be in the long run interest of a corporation that is a major employer in a small community to devote resources to providing amenities to that community or to improving its government. That may make it easier to attract desirable employees, it may reduce the wage bill or lessen losses from pilferage and sabotage or have other worthwhile effects. Or it may be that, given the laws about the deductibility of corporate charitable contributions, the stockholders can contribute more to charities they favour by having the corporation make the gift than by doing it themselves, since they can in that way contribute an amount that would otherwise have been paid as corporate taxes.”

Although Friedman calls this ‘hypocritical window-dressing’ when done under ‘the cloak of social responsibility’, he concedes that these practices may be justified if they contribute to shareholders’ interests. Hence, he is setting out an early version of what today is more popularly called ‘strategic philanthropy’ – the practice of social responsibility only when it is aligned with corporate profitability. …

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[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”download” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/blog_philanthropy_smokescreen_wvisser.pdf”]Pdf[/button] Is Philanthropy a Smokescreen? (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. (2011) Is Philanthropy a Smokescreen? Wayne Visser Blog Briefing, 20 October 2011.

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Is Greed Still Good?

Is Greed Still Good?

Blog by Wayne Visser

Part 2 of 13 in the Age of Responsibility Blog Series for CSRwire.

If CSR isn’t working, could it be because it pales into insignificance in the face of a much more pervasive force at work in business and society, namely greed? After all, “greed is good!” So declared the fictional character Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone’s 1987 film, Wall Street. “Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms – greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge – has marked the upward surge of mankind.” I wonder if today, nearly 25 years and a 7 trillion dollar global financial meltdown later, we are finally ready to lay this powerful myth to rest?

We have lived through an Age of Greed and come out the other side bruised and battered, disillusioned and angry. But are we any wiser? Ever since the first financial derivatives were traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 1972 and the casino economy really got going, it seems like ‘greed is good’ and ‘bigger is better’ became the dual-mottos underpinning (at least one popular version of) the American Dream. The ‘invisible hand’ of the market went largely unquestioned, despite its self-pleasuring habit. Incentives – like Wall Street profits, traders’ bonuses and CEO pay – became perverse, leading not only to unbelievable wealth in the hands of a few, but ultimately to global financial catastrophe.

With the world still reeling from the ensuing global recession, and threatening to slip into the ‘double-dip’ doldrums, I find myself compelled to ask many difficult questions: Was this, as Lehman Brothers trader Larry McDonald suggests in his book of the same name, just ‘a colossal failure of common sense’? Was it the greed of ‘bad apples’ like Lehman’s CEO Dick Fuld, or the banks and their insatiable bonus-driven traders? Or was it the pervasive culture of greed in Wall Street as a whole? What about the greed of politicians and governments who were happy to benefit from growth-on-steroids? And what about Main Street? Wasn’t the public – we, the people – more than happy to greedily lap up those subprime loans?

All this begs the larger question: Is capitalism itself fundamentally flawed? Are we really talking about endemic greed, built into the free-market system – a system which not only allowed, but encouraged the fantasy of double-digit profit growth and an endless bull market? Will capitalism, with its short term, cost-externalization, shareholder-value focus always tend towards greed, at the expense of people and the planet? Will the scenario of ‘overshoot and collapse’ that was computer modelled in the 1972 ‘Limits to Growth’ report (and reaffirmed in revisions 20 and 30 years later) still come to pass? Has Karl Marx been vindicated in his critique (albeit not in his solution) that, by design, capitalism causes wealth and power to accumulate in fewer and fewer hands?

Perhaps the trillion-dollar question for me is not whether capitalism per se acts like a cancer gene of greed in society, but whether there are different types of capitalism, some of which are more benign than others. To date, the world has by and large been following the Western, Anglo-Saxon model of shareholder-driven capitalism, and perhaps this is the version that is morally bankrupt and systemically flawed …

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[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”download” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/blog_greed_good_wvisser.pdf”]Pdf[/button] Is Greed Still Good? (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. (2011) Is Greed Still Good? Wayne Visser Blog Briefing, 13 October 2011.

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The Death of CSR

The Death of CSR

Blog by Wayne Visser

Part 1 of 13 in the Age of Responsibility Blog Series for CSRwire.

My opening questions to you, dear readers, are: Has CSR failed? And if it has, should we kill it off before it misleads and distracts too many people from the changes we really need business to make? Or can we reinvent the concept and the practice of CSR?

First let me say what I understand by CSR. I take CSR to stand for Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility, rather than Corporate Social Responsibility, but feel free use whichever proxy label you are most comfortable with. My definition is as follows:

CSR is the way in which business consistently creates shared value in society through economic development, good governance, stakeholder responsiveness and environmental improvement.

Put another way:

CSR is an integrated, systemic approach by business that builds, rather than erodes or destroys, economic, social, human and natural capital.

Given this understanding, my usual starting point for any discussion on CSR is to argue that it has failed. In my book, The Age of Responsibility, I provide the data and arguments to back up this audacious claim. But the logic is simple and compelling. A doctor judges his/her success by whether the patient is getting better (healthier) or worse (sicker). Similarly, we should judge the success of CSR by whether our communities and ecosystems are getting better or worse. And while at the micro level – in terms of specific CSR projects and practices – we can show many improvements, at the macro level almost every indicator of our social, environmental and ethical health is in decline.

I am not alone in my assessment. Indeed, Paul Hawken stated in The Ecology of Commerce in 1993 that ‘If every company on the planet were to adopt the best environmental practice of the ‘‘leading’’ companies, the world would still be moving toward sure degradation and collapse.’ Unfortunately, this is still true nearly 20 years later. Jeffrey Hollender, co-founder and former CEO of Seventh Generation, agrees, saying: ‘I believe that the vast majority of companies fail to be ‘‘good’’ corporate citizens, Seventh Generation included. Most sustainability and corporate responsibility programs are about being less bad rather than good. They are about selective and compartmentalized ‘‘programs’’ rather than holistic and systemic change.’

In fact, there is no shortage of critics of CSR. For example, in 2004, Christian Aid issued a report called ‘Behind the Mask: The Real Face of CSR’, in which they argue that ‘CSR is a completely inadequate response to the sometimes devastating impact that multinational companies can have in an ever-more globalized world – and it is actually used to mask that impact.’ A more recent example was an article in the Wall Street Journal (23 August 2010) called ‘The Case Against Corporate Social Responsibility’, which claims that ‘the idea that companies have a responsibility to act in the public interest and will profit from doing so is fundamentally flawed’ …

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[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”download” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/blog_death_of_csr_wvisser.pdf”]Pdf[/button] The Death of CSR (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. (2011) The Death of CSR, Wayne Visser Blog Briefing, 6 October 2011.

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Galapagos 2011 Notes

02 October 2011

It is 8.30 pm and I am sitting at the ocean front bar of the Sol y Mar hotel in Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz Island. My first impression of Galapagos is that the variance of micro climates within a short distance is remarkable, from arid, cactus strewn desert to lush humid forest.

On the way from the airport to the hotel, we stopped to see the giant tortoises. What surprised me the most was their abundance. It was almost like stumbling across a herd of cattle or flock of sheep. Their size and ancient features are incredible. Apparently, they live to 120 years and their shells weigh 250 kgs when full grown.

We also visited a volcanic cave, with a 300 m tunnel where rivers of lava used to flow. The main town hugs the coastline and I spent many pleasurable minutes mesmerized by the frigates and delighted by the occasional pelican gliding by. I already feel very calm and peaceful here, especially now as I listen to the waves lapping against the key.

Even so, I have finished by Pisco Sour and popcorn, and my pickup is as 6 am, so I will head back to my room for an early night.

03 October 2011

Today’s excursion began with a 1 hour bus ride across the island and then a 2.5 hour boat trip out to Bartholomew Island, where we climbed to the top of the volcano and then snorkelled in the bay.

The island is entirely volcanic and one of Galapagos’s newest (approximately 1 million years old, versus 5 million for the rest of the archipelago). It is like peering through a tear in the fabric of time, back to the beginning of creation. There are just a few plant species that have managed to gain a foothold on what is otherwise a barren landscape of contorted lava rock (black and rust-coloured) and lava ash.

The snorkelling was breathtakingly beautiful and I was lucky enough to see a large school of bright yellow-tailed fish, as well as a sting ray (it is so big! Maybe 1.5 metres across). I also saw small iguanas and exquisite bright red crabs. We had occasional company from frigate birds, sea longs and penguins alongside the boat, and were treated to boobies bomb-diving for fish. All in all, an exciting and relaxing day, worth every bit of the sunburn that I am now suffering with.

04 October 2011

Today was perhaps one of the most blissful of my life. In the morning, I went to Tortuga Bay and spent a few hours sitting on the volcanic rocks overlooking the lagoon, flanked on both sides by marine iguanas and blue-footed boobies. My goal was to photograph the boobies in flight, but ‘doing’ soon dissolved into ‘being’ – a feeling of at-one-ness with nature and contentment in the moment.

En route – a 45 minute walk along the beach – I encountered colonies of marine iguanas, and managed to snap a pelican as it launched to capture a fish in the shallows. I also spotted a white finned reef shark gliding past in the turquoise water, and saw (for the first time) crabs scuttling along the surface of the water between rocks about one metre apart.

I wouldn’t have believed it possible for my day to get any better. However, as I took a water taxi to a nearby beach in the afternoon, I chanced to meet Jacqueline de Roy. Since she is 85 and had several heavy bags, I offered to help carry these to her home nearby. She invited me in and we got talking. What a fascinating life she has read.

She arrived in Galapagos from Belgium with her late husband in the 1950s and never left. At the time, there were only about 150 people loving on the islands (today, the population is about 200,000). They did various things to survive, from farming (bananas) to tour operating and selling crafts (ink sketches on wood, pottery, sculptures and silver jewellery). Along the way, they helped scientists to collect snails, butterflies and moths, and even have several species named after them.

Their daughter, Tui de Roy, ended up becoming a renowned wildlife photographer, with books about Galapagos, the Andes, albatrosses and New Zealand (where she now lives). Needless to say, I was easily tempted into buying some of Angelique’s silver jewellery (iguana and penguin pendants and blue footed boobie and tropic bird earrings), as well as one of her daughter’s spectacular books called ‘Galapagos: Islands Born of Fire’.

The whole encounter was one of those rare, random meetings of strangers who open a window on each other’s lives and part mutually enriched in spirit. It reminds me of Indira and my discovery of Kookaburra Cottage in Australia. These are the golden nuggets we are sometimes lucky to find along life’s dusty pathways – the real treasures of existence.

Related Diaries

Ecuador 2011 Notes

Related Poems

Galapagos | Serenity

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Ecuador 2011 Notes

01 October 2011

On my flight to Quito from Guayaquil in Ecuador, I watched a really good movie on the plane – directed by Woody Allen, called Midnight in Paris’. It’s about an aspiring writer who gets in touch with his nostalgia through travelling back in time, finally learning to live in and appreciate his present, albeit one in which he is more true to himself and his muse.

Also, I bought some books at the airport that I’m enjoying – Solar, by Ian McEwan, Slow Love, by Dominique Browing, and Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman. This last one is a story told by a boy who recently arrived in London from Ghana. It has echoes of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

The workshop in Quito went well. Then I spent some time with a colleague, Maria Sara, visiting the indigenous market, while my friend Roberto went to the service for his father, who passed away a month ago. I managed to find a beautiful tablecloth and authentically traditional bag.

After Roberto’s service, he took me to a restaurant overlooking the city. The changing light as the sun set was truly magical, especially as there were storm clouds gathering. After coffee at his brother in law’s, we came home and he played some piano and guitar for me. I even had a strum and tried to dredge up my memory of songs I used to play.

I found out a bit about refugees in Ecuador – a few hundred thousand, mainly from Columbia. The law here is very open and welcoming, which also has its own problems. In Columbia, there are apparently about 4 million internally displaced people.

Well, tomorrow I leave at 6.15 am for Galapagos, via Guayaquil. I am looking forward to a few days break, and the wildlife I will hopefully see. I will take lots of photos.

02 October 2011

I’m on the plane at Guayaquil, in transit from Quito to Galapagos. Once again, I am struck by how fortunate I am. This little escapade is being paid for by someone else (CEAL) as an incentive to induce me to stay on to speak at their conference next week, for which I am most grateful.

As much as the chance to see the islands’ exotic creatures, I am looking forward to getting more connected to Darwin’s story, a second link, after his Cambridge history. It is hard not to be swept up by the profound eddies of fate which brought Darwin to these islands and helped to confirm his theory of evolution. In a world of grey ordinariness, we inevitably bask in the reflected colourfulness of great discoverers, wishing that we could be the ones who left a luminous mark on the cave walls of history. I am no different.

Despite this imminent prospect of adventure – or at least new sights – I am reminded of Alain de Botton’s observation in ‘The Art of Travel’ that the only trouble with ‘getaway’ holidays is that we take ourselves along. And so when I read about the tragic fictional character of Nobel Prize winner Prof Beard in McEwan’s ‘Solar’, I am looking for my reflection on the page.

Related Diaries

Galapagos 2011 Notes

Related Poems

Galapagos | Serenity

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Circularity

Circularity:

Towards Sustainable Consumption and Production

Blog by Wayne Visser

Towards the end of the 1980s, a concept called ‘industrial ecology’ emerged. It was popularized in 1989 in a Scientific American article by Robert Frosch and Nicholas E. Gallopoulos, in which they declared: ‘Why would not our industrial system behave like an ecosystem, where the wastes of a species may be resource to another species? Why would not the outputs of an industry be the inputs of another, thus reducing use of raw materials, pollution, and saving on waste treatment?’

Hence, the idea of industrial ecology is that businesses should not only look at the life cycle impacts as individual entities, but rather look for ways in which to link up with other businesses to minimise their impacts. For example, there is a Danish industrial park in the city of Kalundborg where a power plant, oil refinery, pharmaceutical plant, plasterboard factory, enzyme manufacturer, waste management company and the city itself all link together to share and utilise resources, by-products, energy and waste heat.

Another concept that was gaining popularity around the same time was ‘cleaner production’, which resulted in the UNEP Declaration on Cleaner Production in 1998. Later, this evolved into the concept of ‘sustainable consumption and production’, which was defined at the UN’s 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development as an approach ‘to promote social and economic development within the carrying capacity of ecosystems by addressing and, where appropriate, de-linking economic growth and environmental degradation through improving efficiency and sustainability in the use of resources and production processes and reducing resource degradation, pollution and waste.’

The University of Cambridge Business Primer on Sustainable Consumption and Production (2007) gives an example to underscore the importance of creating more sustainable industrial processes. On average, the report says, a gold wedding ring weighs 6,000 kilograms. The enormous discrepancy between the actual retail product and the remaining weight is explained by accounting for all the materials used and the waste created during the production life cycle of the ring. The gap between a gold ring’s actual, physical weight and its ‘resource weight’ highlights the scale of physical and financial impacts that are associated with the creation of apparently simple, everyday products.

The report concludes that ‘the increased cost that results from the difference between sustainable and unsustainable production is not good for anyone. It is not sustainable financially – such low resource efficiency is wasteful and inefficient. And it is not sustainable socially or environmentally – hazardous or damaging waste products are produced systematically, and resources are increasingly depleted.’

Recognising this challenge, the EU government has begun working with business to create ‘product roadmapping’ as a way of systematising what might otherwise be a more organic, haphazard approach to developing products and the policies that support them. ‘Integrated Product Policy’ (IPP) is how government describes conducting life cycle assessments with a view to potential policy interventions. The IPP of the EU, adopted in 2003, aims at reducing the environmental impact of products, instead of specific industries or processes …

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[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”download” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/blog_circularity_wvisser.pdf”]Pdf[/button] Circularity: Towards Sustainable Consumption & Production (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. (2011) Circularity: Towards Sustainable Consumption & Production, Wayne Visser Blog Briefing, 21 September 2011.

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