What do Greenpeace and the Worldwide Fund for Nature have in common? More than you might think, although Greenpeace is a high-profile, aggressive campaigning organisation funded by individuals with a penchant for spectacle, whilst WWF describes itself as a ‘critical friend’ of business and governments, and has long term partnerships with these folks, funded by, well, these folks.
Participating in their self-reflective analysis of their approach to business and sustainability revealed way more similarities than expected.…
Hardly had I pressed the button on my recent ‘Thank you, Harvard’ blog that I received a cascade of emails asking me what i was planning to do ‘next’. Normally I would not use my blog to detail my (presumed) place in the world, but to fill apparently an information vacuum this blog will be a (hopefully rare) exception. Those with no interest or having already over-indulged in such enquiry need read no further.…
When HSBC’s Climate Change Centre for Excellence ” published Climate for Recovery“, there was real hope that our global hangover could be eased by spending on green rather than returning to our old ways. US$430 billion had been pumped by concerned governments at that time into Keynesian-style, demand-pumping to kick start near-dead economies. What an opportunity, the optimistic paper argued, for large-scale investment in green infrastructure.…
When in Quingdao, what better than to listen to Jin Zhiguo, Chairman of home-town Tsingtao Brewery, one of China’s favourite beers. Alongside other Chinese business luminaries, including Yu Minhong of New Oriental Education and Technology Group and Feng Lun from Vantone Holdings, Jin Zhiguo offerered a “feast of ideas in amidst a global shift” at the launch of the China Entrepreneur Club’s ‘Annual Summit of China Green Companies 2011′.…
Sao Paolo, Thursday 31st March (a key day for those with UK-style April-March financial year’s). Having survived last night a gun point hold up by a passing biker robbing folks stuck in the endless Sao Paolo traffic, I make my way to a laudable meeting of the Global Business Initiative on Human Rights being hosted by Ethos and attended by a hundred plus Brazilian businesses.…
Normally I resist telling ‘back stories’, but this one seemed unmissable.
Sitting on a plane in Geneva en route to Johannesburg (via London), I found myself next to a member of the UN Human Rights Council who had just left an on-going meeting. I asked politely, with nothing but concern and interest in mind, whether the situation in Libya had come up in discussion.…
Images of the green economy have gone viral, as a rash of celebratory reports hit the streets. But is this the long-lost key to the secret garden of sustainable development, or yet another impossible maze of words of wish-it-could-
be-but-it-isn’t?
Most visible has been the report, ‘Towards a Green Economy‘ launched last week at the global headquarters of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nariobi.…
Global businesses complain that emerging market companies compete unfairly by ignoring social and environmental standards. The accused in turn point to international media bias and argue that sustainability standards are North Atlantic clubs dominated by incumbent businesses using NGOs to protect profitable markets.
At stake is not just the fate of individual companies, but the impact of intensified global competition on our natural environment and communities.…
