Good governance: finance industry

Good governance is important for nation-states, cities, big and small business, NGOs, charities, universities and community groups. It is essential to fairness and justice, which must be key elements of any future sustainable society. Good governance clearly is of paramount importance to our finance organizations whose recent practices have been generally recognized as being in many cases profoundly questionable. These practices, whether they deal directly with green issues or not, are essential in building trust and stability in society and the economy. Barclays Bank has been a financial institution that has received a considerable degree of justified criticism recently and has been fined both in the USA and UK as a result. Its response has been to overhaul and revise its corporate citizenship commitments and governance structures. Its 2013 Citizenship Report states:

‘During 2013, we developed and piloted a Citizenship Lens, a values based decision-making tool which is being applied alongside other decision-making tools, to help colleagues move beyond legal, regulatory and compliance requirements, to consider broader societal impacts and opportunities in our key business decisions.

In applying this Lens, we will seek to ensure that we are taking into account the interests of our customers, clients, shareholders and communities in the decisions we make every day.

The Lens is designed to serve as a guide in the first stage of the decision-making process in order to help facilitate a discussion about our impact as well as the potential to create sustainable value for wider society – in the short and long term.

The Lens covers the following five high-level questions:

1. How are we making a profit (directly or indirectly)?
2. How are we being transparent and clear in our communication and dealings with customers and stakeholders?
3. How are we creating long-term value?
4. How are we creating shared value, where win-win occurs to Barclays, the customer and society at large?
5. Is this the right thing to do?

The Lens is being integrated into our core decision-making processes and governance structures, including new product approval. In 2014, we will launch training for key colleagues involved in areas such as new product development.’

Political action from the outside: Jose Bove and the Confederation Paysanne

Jose Bove has been referred to as the ‘Wat Tyler of France’. As well as being an advocate of sustainability and localism, he also shows why farming should be a key support for sustainable development rather than its opposite, as is so often the case with big agri-businesses. In The World is Not for Sale (Bove and Dufour, 2001: 124) he said:

‘We don’t believe the farmer’s job can be reduced to marketing. Farmers work with what’s alive and on the land. They promote employment, help conserve biodiversity, and preserve and maintain the countryside. Choices made by farmers directly affect the land and the environment. There are three dimensions to the farmer’s job: economic, social and environmental; and it’s the integration of these three – or lack of it – that defines agriculture today.’

His protests won him world-wide acclamation and publicity. British journalist and activist Bea Campbell (2000) was one of a number of people who championed his actions:

‘Last summer [French farmer] Bove and four other leaders of the Confederation Paysanne bulldozed a new McDonald's being built in Millau, their little town in the south of France, the cradle of Roquefort cheese production. The French courts took a tough line. They jailed Bove and his comrades and set bail at £11,000. This summer a throng of supporters stopped the traffic in Millau, near where I'm staying, decorated walls with graffiti proclaiming “End McDomination”, and handed out free Roquefort cheese.

All this is part of their campaign to expose the tactics of the WTO as sponsors of big US producers. The WTO has imposed punitive taxes on Roquefort and other local products in response to the European Union's decision to ban imports of US beef impregnated with hormones. Ninety per cent of US beef is hormone-treated.

Roquefort, the sharp, salty, blue cheese produced only in this part of France, has a piquant place in the great debate. Philippe Folliot, mayor of St Pierre de Trivisy, a village in the heart of Roquefort country, explains that Roquefort represents the antithesis of globalisation because it “is made from the milk of only one breed of sheep, it is made in only one place in France and it is made in a special way” – unlike Big Macs or Coca-Cola, which are produced in stiff uniformity in the manner of the Model T Ford, by corporations that lay waste to a landscape of local producers. It is not so much the uniformity that offends the French producers as the producers' loss of control over their own knowledge and skill and the quality of the product itself.’

References

Bove, J. and Dufour, F. (2001) The World is Not for Sale: Farmers against Junk Food. London, Verso.

Campbell, B. (2000) ‘Stand up for Cheese Power’, Independent, August 5, available at www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/beatrix-campbell-stand-up-for-cheese-power-696718.html.

Radical but tempered leadership

The idea of being tempered radical, i.e. of being a loyal member of the organization, working within an organization, but aiming at initiating (ultimately) radical change, is not new. It emerged from the US civil rights movement in the 1960s and was initially taken up by feminists and some black activists. Today the idea has almost become mainstream and is perceived by many as a way of being a leader, particularly in an organization, without having the benefits of either having significant power or authority. Thus a tempered radical is an individual who challenges the status quo of his/her organization, both through their intentional acts and just by being who they are. They are loyal to their organization but may not necessarily be in tune with its values and practices that they would like to change. It requires certain qualities and these include being:

moderate

tough

hot or passionate, but

composed.

In other words being a tempered radical is seeing how far you can go without being fired. There are inevitable tensions and these will probably involve:

not necessarily fitting in or feeling one fits in;

recognizing that there is some conflict between one’s personal values and those of the organization one works within;

sometimes, perhaps often, feeling frustrated;

trying to achieve too much and burning out as a result; and

the perennial advantages and disadvantages of being simultaneously an insider and an outsider.

There will also arise certain ambivalences from inhabiting this position and these include:

perceptions of hypocrisy;

multiple (self) identities;

dangers of assimilation and co-option particularly in the use of language;

isolation and therefore being seen as a bit of an oddball;

a tendency to defer radical commitments in the interests of compromise and incremental gains.

Tempered radicals are perhaps natural compromisers and accommodators who need to be able to enjoy ‘playing the game’. If they can do this then small wins and local achievements will be considered as victories and the need to be opportunistic or at least spontaneous sometimes will be seen as simply being pragmatic. However, it is important for tempered radical to seek support where they can from both inside and outside the organization. This helps personally, psychologically and professionally. Thus having a number of affiliations is important especially in regard to:

the importance of external ties and relationships;

the varied sources of information, resources, emotional support and empathy; and

the support and sustenance from like-minded people.

Further reading

Meyerson, D.E. and Scully, M.A. (1995) Tempered radicalism and the politics of ambivalence and change. Organization Science, Vol. 6, No. 5, pp. 585–600.

New jobs in the eco-efficient economy: Lester Brown’s Plan B

Restructuring the global economy will create not only new industries, but also new jobs—indeed, whole new professions and new specialties within professions. Turning to wind in a big way will require thousands of wind meteorologists to analyze potential wind sites, identifying the best sites for wind farms. The role of wind meteorologists in the new economy will be comparable to that of petroleum geologists in the old economy.

There is a growing demand for environmental architects who can design buildings that are energy- and materials-efficient and that maximize natural heating, cooling, and lighting. In a future of water scarcity, watershed hydrologists will be needed to study the local hydrological cycle, including the movement of underground water, and to determine the sustainable yield of aquifers. They will be at the center of watershed management regimes.

As the world shifts from a throwaway economy, engineers will be needed to design products that can be recycled—from cars to computers. Once products are designed to be disassembled quickly and easily into component parts and materials, comprehensive recycling is relatively easy. These engineers will be responsible for closing the materials loop, converting the linear flow-through (throwaway) economy into a recycling economy.

In countries with a wealth of geothermal energy, it will be up to geothermal geologists to locate the best sites either for power plants or for tapping this underground energy directly to heat buildings. Retraining petroleum geologists to master geothermal technologies is one way of satisfying the likely surge in demand for geothermal geologists.

Source: Brown (2006: 246)

Reference

Brown, L.R. (2006) Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet under sSress and a Civilization in Trouble. New York, Norton.

Responsibility to future generations

Sustainable development operates over both time and space and at its core is our responsibility for future generations. Barbara Adam has published a Challenge Paper for the UK-based Schumacher Institute on the ethical implications of this. She writes:

‘As cultural and social beings we are inescapably future oriented. How we live and produce futures, however, is biographically, culturally and socially distinct. It changes historically, over our lifetime and with specific contexts. As knowledge practices, approaches to the future have consequences. Today the consequences of technological action in particular present us with a new context for accountability and responsibility. It is the challenge to moral conduct, presented by the contemporary context, I want to consider here.’

She asks three very important questions:

What is our responsibility to the future?

Is it possible to be responsible for futures we create?

Are we and should we be responsible to future generations?

Reference

Adam, B. (2015) Responsibility to Future Generations. A Schumacher Institute Challenge Paper.

Samuel Mockbee, learning and the rural studio

Sanders/Dudley House

Sawyerville, AL

1999–2001 2nd Year Project

With the assistance of the Hale County Department of Human Resources, the Rural Studio selected the Sanders-Dudley family as clients for a new home. The family has six children. The Sanders-Dudley house encompasses 1500 sq.ft. and has 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a kitchen-family room, a den and a dining room. The family gathering spaces open onto a central courtyard which is bathed in light at sunrise and sunset. The house is designed to accommodate the many different needs of such a large family, attempting to give children and parents adequate private space, but at the same time creating rooms that foster family interaction. Great consideration was given to daily activities such as preparation for school so that the house might ease the hectic task of raising six children. The material pallet employs rammed-earth for all exterior walls, a steel roof structure, metal studs and sheet-rock on the interior, and an abundance of glass and transparent sheets of poly-carbonate in clerestory windows above eight feet and window-walls surrounding the courtyard.

Rammed earth construction, chosen for the Sanders-Dudley house, is a building technique in which a cement-soil mixture is compacted into forms to create load-bearing walls that harden into what is essentially man-made, engineered rock. Rammed earth was chosen for the construction method because of its durability, its natural resistance to fire and tornado and its sense of permanence and security. The students have researched the rammed earth method through books and government publications, consultation with experienced contractors and extensive tests and mock-ups. Except for some experimental housing built in the 1930s near Birmingham, AL, this is the first house in the Southeast to use this method of construction.

For more information on Samuel Mockbee’s work go to www.ruralstudio.org/

Further information:

Samuel Mockbee’s website: http://samuelmockbee.net/

Schwarzenegger’s guiltless green

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California made a keynote speech at a global warming conference at Georgetown University in 2007. He said:

‘For too long the environmental movement has been powered by guilt. You know the kind of guilt I'm talking about: Smokestacks belching pollution and powering our Jacuzzis and our big-screen TVs and, in my case, powering my private airplanes. It's too bad for us that we can't live the lives of Buddhist monks in Tibet, but you know something, it doesn't happen.

I don't think any movement has ever made much progress based on guilt. Guilt is passive, guilt is inhibiting and guilt is defensive. … Successful movements are built on passion, they're not built on guilt. They are built on passion, they are built on confidence and they are built on critical mass.

California as you know is big, California is powerful and what we do in California has an unbelievable impact. We are sending the world a message, what we are saying is we're going to change the dynamic on greenhouse gases and carbon emissions.

I was followed around by environmental protesters with signs. They didn't like my humvees and Hummers and my SUVs or anything that I did, so even when I promised I would improve the environment when I became governor, they didn't believe I would. Here we are now, 3 1/2 years later, and I'm on the cover of Newsweek as one of the big environmentalists. Only in America.

We don't have to go and take away the muscle cars. We don't have to take away Hummers or SUVs or anything like this, because that's a formula for failure. Instead we have to make those cars more environmentally muscular.

The tipping point will be occurring when the environment is no longer seen as a nag, but as a positive force in people's lives. I don't know when the tipping point occurs, but I know where – in California’.

Source: Schwarzenegger quotes from Coile (2007) San Francisco Chronicle.

The question is: can you drive a Hummer and sport a green warrior badge?

Reference

Coile, Z. (2007) Schwarzenegger's Guiltless Green: he touts keeping muscle cars, but filling up on biofuel. San Francisco Chronicle, April 12, available at: www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/12/MNG6FP74D61.DTL.

Securing the future: sustainable development in the United Kingdom

In the UK following growing public interest in environmental issues throughout the 1980s with Prime Minister Thatcher making a speech on global environmental issues to the Royal Society in 1988, sustainable development emerged as a national and regional policy issue. The Conservative government published a comprehensive White Paper on the environment in 1990 called This Common Inheritance and responded directly to the 1992 Rio Summit by producing the UK’s first national strategy on sustainable development in 1994, Sustainable Development: The UK Strategy. This was prompted by continuing debates relating to world trade, development, pollution control and various anxieties derived from economic and consumer growth and, more specifically, the Treasury’s application of monetary values to ecosystem services. This rationalist cost–benefit approach to sustainability has continued tending to characterize the policies of both Conservative and Labour governments.

In 1999, the ‘New Labour’ government openly addressed sustainable development in a series of policy statements and public speeches, though action came slower than words. In the UK government’s 1999 statement on sustainable development, A Better Quality of Life, the tension between social and environmental equity and economic growth remained evident. A Sustainable Development Commission was established in 2001 with former Director of Friends of the Earth and cofounder of the charity Forum for the Future, Jonathan Porritt, in the chair. Despite its insider status, the Commission issued a critical report on the government’s record on sustainability in 2004. This led to a reworking of UK policy resulting in a more refined understanding of sustainable development, which explicitly acknowledged the significance of ecological limits to economic growth. The five guiding principles discussed in Securing Our Future (DEFRA, 2005) include:

• living within environmental limits;
• ensuring a strong, healthy and just society;
• achieving a sustainable economy;
• promoting good governance; and
• using sound science responsibly.

The government also identified four clear priorities for action, including:

• sustainable consumption and production;
• climate change and energy;
• natural resource protection and environmental enhancement; and
• sustainable communities.

Cross-disciplinary research and the design of sustainability indicators that consistently measure human well-being were also identified as key priorities.

Reference

DEFRA (2005) Securing the Future: Delivering UK Sustainable Development Policy. London, HMSO

Studying Green: conservation and the plight of the orangutan in Indonesia

Green is an unusual film. It is both a hard-hitting portrayal of the causes and consequences of deforestation in Indonesia, and a film that captures the tranquility and calm of wild nature. It contains no narrative or dialogue and yet helps us to understand complex commodity chains. It was made with a small camera by a single person on a tourist visa and has beaten much larger production teams, as well as healthily funding groups to the most prestigious prizes in environmental film making. And if that is not enough, Green was not made for sale or profit – instead you can watch and download it for free at www.greenthefilm.com.

Sometimes the opening or closing credit sequence of a movie is the most imaginative, creative and effective part of a film. Although this is not the case with Green, the final credit sequence is both powerful and challenging. It tells the story of habitat destruction, rampant consumerism, corporate greed and human compassion. It reveals the awful life experiences of a single individual traumatized by the loss of her land, her friends, her family and her home. The director, Patrick Rouxel, presents his audience with a long list of those responsible for these crimes. Thus the film can be viewed as a dramatic indictment of corporate capitalism in general and a whole host of famous, and not-so-famous, private companies, governments and, by implication, NGOs.

What the film indicts, by extension and by association, are those organizations and individuals who promote the possibility and occlude the reality of ‘sustainable palm oil production’. Given the consequences of this poorly regulated industry and its, at least short term, profitability there is only delusion, deception and dissembling in believing otherwise. Those NGOs, such as WWF-Int, who make alliances with the corporates, are not so much changing the leopard’s spots but compromising their own integrity and reputation. This is the dominant message encoded in the relentless roll of the end credits and it is this message that forms the core of both Green’s critical public pedagogy and what should also be at the heart of all formal and informal education for sustainability, conservation and practical action.

The market economy, the relentless drive for profitability and economic growth, of capital accumulation and expansion, provide the largely invisible backdrop to what is business as usual and corporate friendly conservationism. The ruling value syntax may not be seen and may not be recognized but it can be felt. The emotional resonance of one animal’s life story, symbolic as it may be, is reinforced by the affective power of the roll call of those that must be held to account. And these are not just the companies who are providing their customers with what they want but their customers too who want the products peddled without bothering to care what the consequences are to other creatures, their homes, their land, their friends and their family.

Reference

Studying Green, available at http://studyinggreen.wordpress.com.

Sustainable schools policy in the UK: aspiration politics

Schools are an important part of any community, whose importance in promoting social health, skills and social capital should not be denied. Schools can lead by example by demonstrating ways of living, working and being that generate ecological literacy and practical competence. The UK’s New Labour government aimed that all schools become models of sustainable development by 2020 with sustainable schools being ‘guided by the principle of care: for oneself, care for each other (across cultures, distances and time) and care for the environment (far and near)’ (DfES, 2006: 2). The UK’s National Framework for Sustainable Schools asked schools to extend their commitment to sustainable development in eight key areas or ‘doorways’ incorporating the curriculum (teaching and learning), campus (ways of working, food, travel, energy, building construction and renovation) and community (promoting well being and public spirited behaviour). Initiatives like Sustainable Schools in the UK need substantial legislation to ensure any degree of serious success. This did not occur and the good intentions outlined here were abandoned as a result of the economic recession and the election of a Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition government in 2010.

UK National Framework for Sustainable Schools, 2006

Source: DfES, 2006