I didn't want to sign the
Earth Charter at first. Sure, it sounds pretty good on paper: a set of ethical principles for a sustainable future on the Earth, addressing community life, ecological integrity, social and economic justice, democracy, non-violence, and peace. Perhaps I've spent too much time in leadership training and strategic and business planning sessions, but I prefer a small set of measurable goals with clearly defined outcomes. Rather than four broad commitments and 16 supporting statements, I want to see three to five measures and corresponding goals, with a small set of actionable strategies and activities designed to achieve those goals. I want the precision of results rather than the muddle of idealism. After all, "What gets measured, gets done." Right?
Then a friend told me a story from the business trenches, which got me thinking. Dave Thomas, the late founder of Wendy's, once spoke at a nearby college about changes he had made in his company to be more responsible corporate citizens. He had also found a market niche that would make his company competitive with the two other hamburger giants. By purchasing local beef and produce wherever and whenever possible, by supporting local ranchers and farmers, he could not only make a significant change in the environmental and social impacts of his company, but he'd save money on transportation and related costs of buying from international or long distance suppliers. In her mind, if a company like Wendy's could make a change like that and make it work as a business decision, perhaps there is hope for other companies out there.
The story reminded me of Thomas Friedman's phrase "driving the herd." As Friedman writes in
The Lexus and the Olive Tree, if conservationists are going to get ahead of the greedy we need to move faster. "For now, the only way to run as fast as the herd is by riding the herd itself and trying to redirect it," Friedman writes. "We need to demonstrate to the herd that being green, being global, and being greedy can go hand in hand." Greed, of course, is a vice not a virtue. What I think Friedman is getting at with this pithy, alliterative comment is that we need to demonstrate how profitable being green can be, and how essential it is to a truly global sustainability. If we can turn the greed motivation to green motivation, effectively turning it on itself, does the means justify the end? Hard to say. But if greed isn't going away anytime soon, we are left with trying to redirect the motivation any way we can. Guilt has worked, but only gets us so far. "Envy trumps guilt" every time.
I keep waiting for the "tipping point," to use a phrase made popular by Malcolm Gladwell's book of that title. The tipping point where the groundswell of opinion in favor of a world vision such as that represented by the Earth Charter is enough to "tip" us and make change happen. Where is the handful of people who can act at precise pivot points to effect this dramatic change? If it happened with "Hush Puppies" and crime in New York City, why not with the world represented in the Earth Charter? Perhaps we are approaching such a time. With corporations facing increasing scrutiny about their business practices and decreasing confidence in their ability to provide value to their shareholders and the market, perhaps now is the time to force the issue in favor of a better world.
Friedman observes that "Up until ten years ago, environmental performance in manufacturing was not a design objective. But now, with…the SEC telling companies they have to start accurately portraying their environmental liabilities to shareholders -- such as where they are being sued for dumping and what the cleanup could cost -- there has been a paradigm shift." What this means, Friedman suggests, is that companies are getting wise to the fact that building in green procedures at the onset is less expensive than facing the inevitable costs of cleanup later. This is the market dictating how green companies need to be. This is the herd being driven to greener pastures. We need to encourage countries around the world -- as well as municipalities and local governments -- to develop laws that ensure the "polluter pays," while at the same time creating incentives to ensure that
not polluting also pays.
As Mark Moody-Stuart, former chairman of Royal Dutch/Shell said in a recent Reuters article, "Over the last ten years or so, business has come to realize that it's not a question of economic impact, but the environmental and social benefits…are very important." And September's "Earth Summit" in Johannesburg was attended by "more CEO's than heads of state," according to World Resource Institute president Jonathan Lash. There was "more evidence of business groping for ways to support sustainability than lobbying against agreements." All is not rosy, however, as Penny Bonda, a leader in the field of sustainable design, observes "there is substantial evidence that current policy is indeed being formed to conserve and protect not us, but those who profit from pollution."
In the wake of Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, and other scandals, shareholders are demanding greater accountability in financial reporting. We need to look for ways to incorporate environmental costs into the new financial reporting mix --
up front. Companies should include the environmental costs of product manufacturing and services into their financial accounting and should be required to prepare "Environmental Financial Statements" for all their operations.
We also need to develop rigorous methods for determining values for ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration or clean and available water supplies. Many environmentalists seem afraid to call for such valuations because it may raise the cost of protecting biodiversity through traditional methods such as land acquisition. As a fundraiser for the tenth largest non-profit in the country, I say that's just too bad. We'll just have to get more creative about how we protect biodiversity. Gretchen Daily and Katherine Ellison write in their book,
The New Economy of Nature, "the record clearly shows that conservation can't succeed by charity alone. It has a fighting chance, however, with well-designed appeals to self-interest.”
Until we can demonstrate the relative costs of doing business the old way and the benefits of doing things differently, we will still incur the wrath and resistance of major corporate powers to radical ideas like the Earth Charter. We need tax- and market-based incentives to help companies be more environmentally and culturally responsible, "geared to both society's long-term well-being and individuals' self-interest." We need to use the market to effect change and get ahead of the regulations, to get ahead of the herd.
Of course, the danger of "greenwashing" -- companies posing as environmentally friendly to mask continuing anti-green practices--is always there. The
Wall Street Journal reported over the summer that the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies was breaking off its ten-year relationship with GM because the company "was taking advantage of Ceres and never would accept changes that cut into profits." The article cited the move by GM and other auto makers to fend off the Senate's bid to raise fuel-economy standards last Spring. Monitors are needed to ensure companies are being above board environmentally as well as financially and culturally. Daily and Ellison call this the "triple bottom line," tracking a company's financial, social, and environmental performance.
So what of my need for measurable goals? There are plenty of goals out there. The UN Millennium Summit in 2000 offered several goals for world leaders, including cutting the number of people living in poverty in half and giving every child an elementary school education by 2015. And, as UN Undersecretary-General Nitin Desai said in a recent AP story, "You can't reduce poverty unless you also address land and water." The 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg was to focus on five key areas: clean water, sustainable sources of energy, fighting disease, increasing agricultural production and reducing land degradation, and preserving biodiversity. Was the Summit a success and did it result in anything measurable? "Very few votes for that," according to Tom Turner of Earthjustice. "On the concrete, measurable side the answer is a qualified no. It could have been worse, but not much." A lot of paper and not a lot of substance seem to be the consensus.
Of course, "texts don't provide any fresh water to a village, they don't save any forest, they don't bring better health care or provide education," as a senior Bush administration official pointed out. Cynical? Yes, but maybe also realistic. How can we turn platitudes into plowshares? How many trees fell to distribute the 77-page draft implementation plan for the Earth Summit?
Which brings me back to the Earth Charter. It is not a perfect document or maybe it's too perfect, I don't know. Anyway, I signed it, endorsed it, put my name alongside the others -- both friends and foes. I signed it for the same reason I do the work that I do: I want a better world for my son and for my colleagues, for my friends and my foes alike, for all of us. "This requires," says the Earth Charter, "a change of mind and heart. It requires a new sense of global interdependence and universal responsibility. We must imaginatively develop and apply the vision of a sustainable way of life locally, nationally, regionally, and globally." In his report on the Johannesburg Summit, Steven Rockefeller of the Earth Charter Initiative reports that "the World Resources Institute is developing measurable indicators for the Earth Charter principles." This is good news for us pragmatists and skeptics. I'm convinced measures will help make the document more useful for governments, business, and civil society alike.
Rockefeller calls the Earth Charter "an aspirational document." For reason to aspire to the high ideals exemplified by the Earth Charter, we need only look to our children. My son has formed his own opinion about McDonald's: the food is "greasy" and he doesn't want to eat there. If somebody doesn't feel well or is hurt, he is quick to empathize with them and seek a way to help out. He gets excited about the world around him, especially nature, reveling in the bird and bug life of our backyard. He knows the work that I do and is proud that I'm making a better world for him and his contemporaries. He cares for animals and is sympathetic to their plight, whether a lost cat or an endangered species. But he also likes to build and invent things. These are values I'm trying to impart, leading by example rather than telling, but he is influencing me as much as I am him. He would want me to sign a document that declares "our responsibility to one another, to the greater community of life, and to future generations."
High ideals, indeed, but perhaps if we can find the right people to act at the precise pivot points, we may yet tip this thing over and make this vision reality. To do so, we need action by all of us -- business and conservationists, governments and the private sector. We need to drive the herd over to our side, to drive them to greener pastures. The Earth Charter is not the most effective means of getting there, it's not even a road map. It certainly won't drive the herd or even slow it down, but as an aspirational document it provides a vision of where we may be able to be some day. For now, we all need to work on the goals and strategies, the stuff that gets measured, that will really help us get there.
-------
Scott Edward Anderson is an award-winning poet and a director of philanthropy with The Nature Conservancy.
