Porritt: CSR versus Sustainability

Recently Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is all the rage and the debate continues over how much corporations must do to be good corporate citizens. However, there is still a massive divide between companies that do 'good projects' and companies that understand and work towards sustainability.

I'd like to say we did a good job making the distinction in our research thesis on partnerships for sustainability but UK SD Commissioner Jonathon Porritt has really nailed it in an article featured in The Guardian last November:

Sustainability is central to Survival
Jonathan Porritt
Monday November 6, 2006
The Guardian

The Campaign Against Arms Trade was understandably incensed when BAE announced that it would be launching a new range of environment-friendly weapons, including "lead free" bullets, rockets with reduced toxins and grenades that produce less smoke. There have even been experiments to see if explosives can be converted into manure.

BAE executives may well believe they are "doing the right thing" in marginally reducing their environmental footprint while staying true to their particular business model: making as much money as possible flogging weapons of deadly destruction to whoever is prepared to buy them - legally, of course.

It is hard to imagine a better way of explaining the difference between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate sustainability.....

It's not enough simple to wear the badge of corporate responsibility. Business must accept that real change is the only response to the global crisis of sustianability. (read on...)

Nice one JP!

I decided to do a bit of digging to see what BAE say about Corporate Responsibility on their website. Here's just a few ideas

• Ensuring that our products are safe to use is a key responsibility - anyone see the irony?
• Lead used in ammunition can harm the environment and pose a risk to people. Our RO Defence site at Radway Green is developing lead-free ammunition which will be available in 2005.
• There have been concerns that the use of depleted uranium in weapons may cause harm - yes they are phasing it out but elsewhere on the site they mention they still make nuclear weapons.
  
• Contaminated land - of course it only matters at manufacturing sites, not where it products are used.
• They also talk of product stewardship but I suspect they aren't intending to take-back used ammunition for recycling?
• Community - they talk of investment and involvement in a community but there is no mention of the impact their products have on communities.
• Health and safety - Our employees and contractors in manufacturing are exposed to a range of safety risks, such as manual handling, working at height, noise, hand-arm vibration syndrome (HAVs) and respiratory and skin irritation. We also handle explosives and nuclear energy that pose additional risks.
  
• They call themselves a 'responsible defence company'. Seems like they have a long way to go before they can focus on solutions to people's need for protection in ways other than bombs!
  

Burning Buried Sunshine

I’ve been meaning to share this great study from Jeffrey Dukes at the University of Utah which we discuss in the sustainability masters programme at BTH. The info’s a couple of years old now but after chatting with the sceptical flatmate recently and many others in the past, it seems to be something that really hits home to people about the significance of our fossil fuel use. Here’s the media report from The Guardian summing up the findings:

The Heavy cost of a litre of oil petrol

Thursday November 6, 2003

If you burned a litre of petrol on the way to work, consider this: it took 23.5 tonnes of ancient, buried plants to produce. That's the equivalent of 16,200 square metres of wheat, roots and stalks included. So says new research that aims to raise awareness about the need to change our energy-consumption habits.

The long, slow process that converts plant matter into oil is very inefficient, says ecologist Jeff Dukes of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Stanford, who did the calculations. Less than one part in 10,000 of the organic matter becomes oil.

"So much carbon is lost back to the atmosphere through decomposition, it's only the residues that are turned into fossil fuels," says Dukes. Writing in the journal Climatic Change, he warns that less than a tenth of the carbon in plants buried in peat bogs was turned into coal. In 1997, he points out, we burned fossil fuels equivalent to more than 400 times the amount of plant matter produced on Earth in the same year.

I think this is really quite profound! Imagine! What we burned as fossil fuels in 1997 took the equivalent of 400 years of the world’s total plant growth to produce! And, to repeat it, 1 litre of petrol = 23.5 tonnes of plant matter, compressed over millions of years! No wonder we’ve achieved so much in the industrial age with such a powerful and seductive energy source. Of course, we know it aint gonna last forever. We know the side effects of uncontrolled fossil fuel use are catastrophic in terms of greenhouse gases and other pollutants. And, we know there are alternatives.

Dukes, J.S. 2003. Burning buried sunshine: human consumption of ancient solar energy. Climatic Change, 61(1-2): 31-44. Article in pdf.

Offsetting a joke?

Here’s a nice tongue in cheek look at offsetting. A timely joke as, rightly or wrongly, the world warms up to carbon offsetting?

Been feeling guilty about cheating on your other half? Worried that infidelity isn't a sound basis for a sustainable relationship? Apparently now you need worry no more, for you can offset all your cheating at http://www.cheatneutral.com

CheatNeutral.com, launching in time for Valentines Day

What is Cheat Offsetting?
Jealousy and heartbreak are a natural part of modern life. And sometimes, no matter how hard we try, it's just not possible to be faithful. That's why at cheatneutral. com you can offset your cheating by paying someone else to remain faithful.
Offset your cheating now

Loyal and Faithful?
Why not become one of our offset projects? Is loyalty part of your nature? Or maybe you're just happy being single. You can help those who can't help themselves - and get paid for not getting laid.
Sign up here

Can I offset all my cheating?
At cheatneutral. com we know it's not always possible to be faithful. That's why we give you advice about reducing your cheating and then you can offset your remaining unavoidable cheating.

Cheatneutral. com success stories
James and Jo have been together since they met at school. They cheat on each other regularly – James with an ex-girlfriend he can’t let go of, and Jo with a man who delivers stationary to her office who’s name she doesn’t know. To offset their cheating they fund Chris and Mim through Cheatneutral. In return for the payments from Cheatneutral Chris and Mim promise to remain loyal and faithful to each other so that James and Jo can carry on cheating.

James said about the scheme “Cheatneutral gave us advice on how to reduce our cheating first. We try to spend more quality time together now. And then we offset the remaining, unavoidable cheating from times when we’re drunk or feeling low, by funding projects like Chris and Mim."

Happy Planet?

Here's something worth a look. Some great work being done by new economics foundation in London on well-being and the development of a 'happy planet index' which balances human and planetary well-being. The map below shows Latin America to have the highest score while countries in Africa, the US and Russia score poorly.

The HPI incorporates three separate indicators: ecological footprint, life-satisfaction and life expectancy. The statistical calculations that underlie the HPI are quite complex. However conceptually, it is straight forward and intuitive:

HPI =	Life satisfaction x Life expectancy
	Ecological Footprint

The HPI reflects the average years of happy life produced by a given society, nation or group of nations, per unit of planetary resources consumed. Put another way, it represents the efficiency with which countries convert the earth’s finite resources into well-being experienced by their citizens.

While this is a great initiative, I can see some potential shortfalls to this approach. We know for a start that Ecological Footprint is not a true or full measure of sustainability. By using the 4 TNS sustainability principles we identify that EF deals mainly with the need to 'dematerialize' our resource consumption but does not give us any guidance on the need for 'substitutions' eg switching to naturally abundant minerals instead of toxic / scarce ones.

Secondly, looking at the countries that do well in the HPI you can see ones that are war-torn or not generally considered safe. Perhaps combining this index with an assessment of whether people feel their needs are being met might be useful. These are just ideas since have only briefly looked into the workings of HPI...

Tim Flannery: Burning coal is a 'stupid' way to make electricity

Australia urged to lead the way in climate change revolution

AFP, 26 January 2007 - Australia is at the sharp end of the devastating impact of climate change and must urgently undergo an energy revolution if it is to survive, according to eminent scientist, author and winner of the nation's top award, Tim Flannery.

Flannery, who was named Australian of the Year marking the country's national day on January 26, believes that if ever a textbook example of the impact of global warming was needed, Australia provides it.

Read more here.

Global Energy Strategy announced!!!

I've update this entry today with a correction to the reference for a new report on global energy. To clarify, the report was first brought to my attention by the friendly folk at Futerra (who do great work communicating sustianability messages, including this one!). The report itself was commissioned by Greenpeace and the European Renewable Energy Council (EREC) and was independently produced by scientists at DLR, the German Aerospace Centre, with help from academics and energy experts. Read more below:

The energy [r]evolution is an independently produced report that provides a practical blueprint for how to half global CO² emissions, while allowing for an increase in energy consumption by 2050. By dividing the world into 10 regions, with a global summary, it explains how existing energy technologies can be applied in more efficient ways. It demonstrates how a ‘business as usual’ scenario, based on IEA’s World Energy Outlook projections, is not an option for environmental, economic and security of supply reasons.

And more:

The decisions to put us on a path of renewables need to be made within the next few years to make way for stable 'smart' energy.A new report, energy [r]evolution: A Sustainable World Energy Outlook, sets out the 'smart' energy scenario, which halves global CO2 emissions by 2050, while phasing out dangerous and polluting fuels such as nuclear and coal and at the same time allowing for economic growth.

This is a joint report from the European Renewable Energy Council (EREC) and Greenpeace and has been commissioned from the Institute of Technical Thermodynamics at the German Aerospace Centre (DLR).

It has been endorsed by Dr RK Pachauri, the Chair of the agenda-setting Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and shows that a "business as usual" scenario, based on the IEA's World Energy Outlook projection, is not an option.

If we continue on the current energy path, worldwide CO2 emissions are set to almost double by 2050, leading to catastrophic climate change. But there is a plan. Under the energy [r]evolution scenario, annual CO2 emissions will decrease from 23,000 million tonnes in 2003 to 12,000
million tonnes in 2050.

The new 'smart' energy scenario sets out how renewable energy, which can provide at least 65% of the world's electricity and heat, combined with energy efficiencies of at least 50%, can provide for the projected increase in the world's energy demand, without hindering developing
economies such as India, China and South America.

Go to the report website - <http://www.energyblueprint.info/> - to read more and download the report.