Colleagues in BT across the globe who have an interest in sustainability share their insights with me. I find that perspectives from outside of the relatively small group of us immediately involved in sustainability can be especially enlightening. A recent update from Takeshi Fukada, a BT Conferencing sales manager in Japan especially caught my attention for its illustration both of the challenges in reaching a global agreement on emissions reduction but also the support for countries to take action. Takeshi kindly agreed to share his insights below:

The Nikkei newspaper carried an interesting article on October 4th referring to Japan‘s recent commitment to 25% carbon emission reduction by 2020 (from a 1991 baseline).

According to the Nikkei some EU countries, such as France and Denmark, and some developing countries had praise for our announcement. It is an honor for us, but the article says we should consider deeply what their “praise” means.

Developing countries are happy, says the Nikkei, because it is obvious they can expect benefit from it, such as commercial backup and technical support for CO2 reduction. The EU, on the other hand, may be happy because Japan, one of its competitors in the global market, set and committed to this hard target by themselves. The target limits CO2 emission in Japan. It means we have some limitation on our productivity geographically. So the article says that the position of some EU countries is a “backhanded compliment”.

At the same time, we know from the history that its target will not limit our economic expansion because it promotes our technical innovation.

I personally take very positively that Japan takes its high target. We will have some commercial difficulties, but it can put us at a different stage, as a leader in environmental business, like the US takes a lead in IT business.

Last month, I attended a workshop for the US launch of 2 Degrees, a mission driven ‘for profit’ organization in the environmental sustainability space. A few years back I launched an employee charity match program at BT with the help of a small ‘for profit’ but likewise mission driven start up, then called Create Hope, now Truist.

I just read an interesting article ‘Saying Something Different’ by Matthew Bishop in Alliance Magazine. He writes compellingly about social enterprise and what he calls “philanthrocapitalism”. He also addresses how for profits and non-profits have a lot to learn from each other – a topic I touched on in a post ‘What Business Can learn from Non-profits’ .

I welcome the opportunity for learning and perhaps even blurring across the traditional boundaries between mission driven and ‘for profit’ organizations. For-profit organizations have much to gain commercially from developing their sense of mission and non-profits still need to remain financially viable even if they do not have to deliver a financial return on their investment.

Companies with a strong climate change policy may attract recruits sympathetic to the topic. However given timescales I think the stronger dynamic here is that companies have influenced the views of existing employees through company policies.

Good news (although you will have to look at page 12 of the paper itself to see the data) that 50-60% of respondents with a neutral or negative view towards climate change, nevertheless reported participating in environmental actions such as turning off electrical equipment, recycling and traveling less.

The same data set also shows pretty consistently that respondents of all persuasions are more likely to participate in environmentally friendly activities in their personal life than at work. So there is some room for us CR professionals to improve engagement at work across the board.

My first post on this topic was Cost/ROI – A Double Edged Sword.

I read a story in the Washington Post Express today that is also carried in London’s Metro Publication and even the Telegraph. It sounded like a spoof to me so I thought I would put it side by side with a spoof from The Onion yesterday and see if you can guess which is which. Click on the story to see which publication it comes from and, I guess by implication, which is true.

Japan’s All Nippon Airways(ANA) is asking its passengers to use the restroom before boarding……The airline hopes to cut nearly 5 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

Pepsi to cease Advertising “[some of] the company’s $1.3 billion annual advertising budget would be….spread among various charitable organizations…..

The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety has announced a campaign to push for texting while driving bans in all 50 states .

This is a great example for us in the sustainability world. Why ?

AAA stakeholders, the members and funders of the organization, are the ones who are texting while driving. So they must want to text while driving. The AAA could be taking the approach that our members want to do this so we need to lobby on behalf of their desires so they can carry on. They could create fear of a ban by finding an obscure example of a AAA member who was able to text ahead a life saving message while driving a sick child to the hospital.

Instead the AAA has taken a more holistic view and led their stakeholders to what we all know is the right thing to do, not just from a societal perspective but for their own self interest too.

Other organizations, commercial and otherwise, should emulate this approach and take a leadership role with stakeholders to meet not their narrower short term needs, but their longer term more holistic best interests.

The October 2009 edition of Consumer Reports features a special section on cutting energy bills by using more efficient and renewable energy sources. It includes a look at wood pellet stoves and solar water heaters and gives both what I would characterize as cautious support. Cautious because the reviews quite appropriately take into account practical considerations including: sourcing and storing fuel (for the pellet stoves), certifications, neighborhood association rules, and maintenance costs (for the solar water heaters).

I’ve now seen several houses that are using more efficient energy sources. Nearly five years ago, I visited a former boss in Germany and he very proudly showed me his house wood pellet heating system, which was working wonderfully. If I recall correctly, the basement of his house was designed to accommodate the infrastructure it required. More recently, during my trip to Israel it was hard to find a house without solar water heating.

Both of these examples illustrate that overcoming many of our barriers to a more sustainable future are contingent on having the right framework in place. If there was a framework for solar water heating then neighborhood association rules would not be an issue and I bet the cost of maintenance would decrease too.

In fact, a study came out couple of months back (sorry I don’t recall the source) where I saw this dynamic more pointedly. The study showed that if an American-made SUV was in an accident with a smaller European style car, such as the Smart Car, the driver of the smaller vehicle would be more seriously injured. It was portrayed as a reason not to move towards smaller cars. But of course, if everyone drove smaller cars then the problem of a collision with a large vehicle goes away and we settle at a better status quo.

We owe it to ourselves in the corporate world to be on the lookout for things we may rule out mistakenly because they don’t make sense within our current frame of reference. We need to develop positive visions of a sustainable future that allow us to evaluate good ideas within an appropriate framework and infrastructure.

Earlier this week I attended an alumni event of the University of Cambridge Program for Sustainability Leadership held in Washington DC. One of the speakers was Craig Bennett, Deputy Director and faculty member of the Program.

The program addressed the Copenhagen Communiqué , subtitled ‘A call from business for an ambitious, robust and equitable global deal on climate change’.

In two pages, the communiqué establishes a set of principles intended to deliver a message of support from businesses globally, to the negotiators at Copenhagen. Ten pages display the logos and names of the currently 650 companies that have signed up to the principles from across the globe.

Craig is the one of the key drivers behind the communiqué. He made some interesting observations both during his presentation and in a smaller group afterwards (repeated here with his permission). He mentioned that American companies are under-represented (I noticed for example that not all the companies in USCAP or BICEP have signed up). This is partly because the program is European originated and so the staff have a stronger network within Europe. But Craig also shared that some American companies were not comfortable with the statement and declined to sign.

The second component called for in the principles is ‘Developed countries need to take on immediate and deep emission reduction commitments’. That is a pretty strong statement and I suspect may have deterred some potential signatories. That said, Craig shared that he was not entirely unhappy having some companies declining to sign. If everyone had said yes, it would have indicated the document was not strong enough.

I suspect that one of the challenges of signing up to a document like this is that there is not an established precedent or approval pathway in most large organizations for resolving a position on such a statement.

I would urge more companies to sign up. BT is in there. I see the logos of many of the companies of my peer group of CR practitioners in the US, but many are not there. You can sign up here

Incidentally, Craig mentioned that there is a signatory from every country in the G20 except Indonesia – anyone able to suggest some contacts who could help Craig with that ?

I may have mentioned before that I am a collector of antiquarian books. I don’t find it easy to explain why I have a passion for a dusty old book. Sometimes I can even take a step back and see how boring it must seem to others. But a passion I do have. And when I enter an antiquarian bookstore my heart beats faster and my breathing shallows at the anticipation of what I might just find.

I read somewhere that the current owners of an antiquarian book should not think of themselves as owners. They should enjoy the book certainly while they have it. But rather than possessing the book, they should think of themselves as the caretakers of that book for others in the future. This philosophy has brought more pleasure rather than less to my caretaking of the books I currently have in my small library (well, shelf actually!).

I am part way through a relatively contemporary book by Peter Block “Stewardship: Choosing Service Over Self Interest”. The author, Block, positions today’s executives as stewards of both their organizations and of the common good. Similar to owning an antiquarian book, these executives should not view themselves as possessors but rather as caretakers.

Although not identical concepts, I think the idea of caretakers and stewards rather than owners and bosses have much in common. Both concepts will help businesses in their striving towards ever more sustainable behavior.

On Saturday, the Business Pages of the Washington Post carried two stories relating to my industry sector (Information Communications Technology) that highlight the importance for all corporate responsibility practitioners to keep materiality front of mind.

One article describes that the FCC is considering what control, if any, telecommunications, internet and similar companies should be allowed, to block or delay certain traffic on their networks. In the other article, the Justice Department, Google, book authors and publishers are in dispute over arrangements for Google to create a digital library.

Both issues contain prime characteristics of corporate responsibility issues;

- Positive or negative community/civil society impact
- Significant business impact
- Ethical dilemmas
- Corporate risk and reputational impact

Climate change mitigation and adaptation are critical issues and have allowed us to come together across industry sectors. Two items in one day on material issues in my sector reminds me that we also need to ensure that the focus required for green issues does not result in our taking the eye off the ball for other material CR issues that are specific to the industry sector we are in.