[Please note that the views presented by individual contributors
are not necessarily representative of the views of ATCA, which is neutral.
ATCA conducts collective Socratic dialogue on global opportunities and
threats.]
We are grateful to:
. Dr Muhammad Yunus, Founder, Grameen Bank and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
2006, from Oslo, Norway, for, "The Nobel Lecture: Dangers of Globalisation";
. John Elkington, Founder and Chief Entrepreneur, SustainAbility from
London, England, for "New Lessons to be learnt from the Success
of Social Entrepreneurship"; and
. The Lord Howell of Guildford from The Palace of Westminster for "Energy
Security, Addressing Climate Chaos and Lifting Billions out of Poverty"
for their response to ATCA in regard to HRH Prince Charles, The Prince
of Wales's new initiative "Costing The Earth - The Accounting For
Sustainability" launched at St James's Palace, London, on 6th December
2006.
Muhammad Yunus, PhD, (born June 28, 1940), is a Bangladeshi banker
and economist. He is the developer and founder of the concept of microcredit,
the extension of small loans to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for
traditional bank loans. Dr Yunus is also the founder of Grameen Bank.
In 2006, Dr Yunus and the bank were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize, "for their efforts to create economic and social development
from below." Dr Yunus has received several other international
honours, including the ITU World Information Society Award, Ramon Magsaysay
Award, the World Food Prize and the Sydney Peace Prize. He is the author
of Banker to the Poor and a founding board member of Grameen Foundation.
The Nobel Lecture given by The Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 2006, Dr Muhammad
Yunus, in Oslo, Norway, on 10th December 2006 follows:
Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Honourable Members of the Norwegian
Nobel Committee, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen
Re: The Nobel Lecture: Peace, Poverty and Social Capitalism
Grameen Bank and I are deeply honoured to receive this most prestigious
of awards. We are thrilled and overwhelmed by this honour. Since the
Nobel Peace Prize was announced, I have received endless messages from
around the world, but what moves me most are the calls I get almost
daily, from the borrowers of Grameen Bank in remote Bangladeshi villages,
who just want to say how proud they are to have received this recognition.
Nine elected representatives of the 7 million borrowers-cum-owners of
Grameen Bank have accompanied me all the way to Oslo to receive the
prize. I express thanks on their behalf to the Norwegian Nobel Committee
for choosing Grameen Bank for this year's Nobel Peace Prize. By giving
their institution the most prestigious prize in the world, you give
them unparalleled honour. Thanks to your prize, nine proud women from
the villages of Bangladesh are at the ceremony today as Nobel laureates,
giving an altogether new meaning to the Nobel Peace Prize.
All borrowers of Grameen Bank are celebrating this day as the greatest
day of their lives. They are gathering around the nearest television
set in their villages all over Bangladesh, along with other villagers,
to watch the proceedings of this ceremony.
This years' prize gives highest honour and dignity to the hundreds of
millions of women all around the world who struggle every day to make
a living and bring hope for a better life for their children. This is
a historic moment for them.
Poverty is a Threat to Peace
By giving us this prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has given important
support to the proposition that peace is inextricably linked to poverty.
Poverty is a threat to peace.
World's income distribution gives a very telling story. Ninety four
percent of the world income goes to 40 percent of the population while
sixty percent of people live on only 6 per cent of world income. Half
of the world population lives on two dollars a day. Over one billion
people live on less than a dollar a day. This is no formula for peace.
The new millennium began with a great global dream. World leaders gathered
at the United Nations in 2000 and adopted, among others, a historic
goal to reduce poverty by half by 2015. Never in human history had such
a bold goal been adopted by the entire world in one voice, one that
specified time and size. But then came September 11 and the Iraq war,
and suddenly the world became derailed from the pursuit of this dream,
with the attention of world leaders shifting from the war on poverty
to the war on terrorism. Till now over USD 530 billion has been spent
on the war in Iraq by the USA alone.
I believe terrorism cannot be won over by military action. Terrorism
must be condemned in the strongest language. We must stand solidly against
it, and find all the means to end it. We must address the root causes
of terrorism to end it for all time to come. I believe that putting
resources into improving the lives of the poor people is a better strategy
than spending it on guns.
Poverty is Denial of All Human Rights
Peace should be understood in a human way in a broad social, political
and economic way. Peace is threatened by unjust economic, social and
political order, absence of democracy, environmental degradation and
absence of human rights.
Poverty is the absence of all human rights. The frustrations, hostility
and anger generated by abject poverty cannot sustain peace in any society.
For building stable peace we must find ways to provide opportunities
for people to live decent lives.
The creation of opportunities for the majority of people -- the poor
-- is at the heart of the work that we have dedicated ourselves to during
the past 30 years.
Grameen Bank
I became involved in the poverty issue not as a policymaker or a researcher.
I became involved because poverty was all around me, and I could not
turn away from it. In 1974, I found it difficult to teach elegant theories
of economics in the university classroom, in the backdrop of a terrible
famine in Bangladesh. Suddenly, I felt the emptiness of those theories
in the face of crushing hunger and poverty. I wanted to do something
immediate to help people around me, even if it was just one human being,
to get through another day with a little more ease. That brought me
face to face with poor people's struggle to find the tiniest amounts
of money to support their efforts to eke out a living. I was shocked
to discover a woman in the village, borrowing less than a dollar from
the money-lender, on the condition that he would have the exclusive
right to buy all she produces at the price he decides. This, to me,
was a way of recruiting slave labour.
I decided to make a list of the victims of this money-lending "business"
in the village next door to our campus. When my list was done, it had
the names of 42 victims who borrowed a total amount of USD 27. I offered
USD 27 from my own pocket to get these victims out of the clutches of
those money-lenders. The excitement that was created among the people
by this small action got me further involved in it. If I could make
so many people so happy with such a tiny amount of money, why not do
more of it?
That is what I have been trying to do ever since. The first thing I
did was to try to persuade the bank located in the campus to lend money
to the poor. But that did not work. The bank said that the poor were
not creditworthy. After all my efforts, over several months, failed
I offered to become a guarantor for the loans to the poor. I was stunned
by the result. The poor paid back their loans, on time, every time!
But still I kept confronting difficulties in expanding the program through
the existing banks. That was when I decided to create a separate bank
for the poor, and in 1983, I finally succeeded in doing that. I named
it Grameen Bank or Village bank.
Today, Grameen Bank gives loans to nearly 7.0 million poor people, 97
per cent of whom are women, in 73,000 villages in Bangladesh. Grameen
Bank gives collateral-free income generating, housing, student and micro-enterprise
loans to the poor families and offers a host of attractive savings,
pension funds and insurance products for its members. Since it introduced
them in 1984, housing loans have been used to construct 640,000 houses.
The legal ownership of these houses belongs to the women themselves.
We focused on women because we found giving loans to women always brought
more benefits to the family.
In a cumulative way the bank has given out loans totalling about USD
6.0 billion. The repayment rate is 99%. Grameen Bank routinely makes
profit. Financially, it is self-reliant and has not taken donor money
since 1995. Deposits and own resources of Grameen Bank today amount
to 143 per cent of all outstanding loans. According to Grameen Bank's
internal survey, 58 per cent of our borrowers have crossed the poverty
line.
Grameen Bank was born as a tiny home-grown project run with the help
of several of my students, all local girls and boys. Three of these
students are still with me in Grameen Bank, after all these years, as
its topmost executives. They are here today to receive this honour you
give us.
This idea, which began in Jobra, a small village in Bangladesh, has
spread around the world and there are now Grameen type programs in almost
every country.
Second Generation
It is 30 years now since we began. We keep looking at the children
of our borrowers to see what has been the impact of our work on their
lives. The women who are our borrowers always gave topmost priority
to the children. One of the Sixteen Decisions developed and followed
by them was to send children to school. Grameen Bank encouraged them,
and before long all the children were going to school. Many of these
children made it to the top of their class. We wanted to celebrate that,
so we introduced scholarships for talented students. Grameen Bank now
gives 30,000 scholarships every year.
Many of the children went on to higher education to become doctors,
engineers, college teachers and other professionals. We introduced student
loans to make it easy for Grameen students to complete higher education.
Now some of them have PhD's. There are 13,000 students on student loans.
Over 7,000 students are now added to this number annually.
We are creating a completely new generation that will be well equipped
to take their families way out of the reach of poverty. We want to make
a break in the historical continuation of poverty.
Beggars Can Turn to Business
In Bangladesh 80 percent of the poor families have already been reached
with microcredit. We are hoping that by 2010, 100 per cent of the poor
families will be reached.
Three years ago we started an exclusive programme focusing on the beggars.
None of Grameen Bank's rules apply to them. Loans are interest-free;
they can pay whatever amount they wish, whenever they wish. We gave
them the idea to carry small merchandise such as snacks, toys or household
items, when they went from house to house for begging. The idea worked.
There are now 85,000 beggars in the program. About 5,000 of them have
already stopped begging completely. Typical loan to a beggar is USD
12.
We encourage and support every conceivable intervention to help the
poor fight out of poverty. We always advocate microcredit in addition
to all other interventions, arguing that microcredit makes those interventions
work better.
Information Technology for the Poor
Information and communication technology (ICT) is quickly changing
the world, creating distanceless, borderless world of instantaneous
communications. Increasingly, it is becoming less and less costly. I
saw an opportunity for the poor people to change their lives if this
technology could be brought to them to meet their needs.
As a first step to bring ICT to the poor we created a mobile phone company,
Grameen Phone. We gave loans from Grameen Bank to the poor women to
buy mobile phones to sell phone services in the villages. We saw the
synergy between microcredit and ICT.
The phone business was a success and became a coveted enterprise for
Grameen borrowers. Telephone-ladies quickly learned and innovated the
ropes of the telephone business, and it has become the quickest way
to get out of poverty and to earn social respectability. Today there
are nearly 300,000 telephone ladies providing telephone service in all
the villages of Bangladesh. Grameen Phone has more than 10 million subscribers,
and is the largest mobile phone company in the country. Although the
number of telephone-ladies is only a small fraction of the total number
of subscribers, they generate 19 per cent of the revenue of the company.
Out of the nine board members who are attending this grand ceremony
today 4 are telephone-ladies.
Grameen Phone is a joint-venture company owned by Telenor of Norway
and Grameen Telecom of Bangladesh. Telenor owns 62 per cent share of
the company, Grameen Telecom owns 38 per cent. Our vision was to ultimately
convert this company into a social business by giving majority ownership
to the poor women of Grameen Bank. We are working towards that goal.
Someday Grameen Phone will become another example of a big enterprise
owned by the poor.
Free Market Economy
Capitalism centers on the free market. It is claimed that the freer
the market, the better is the result of capitalism in solving the questions
of what, how, and for whom. It is also claimed that the individual search
for personal gains brings collective optimal result.
I am in favour of strengthening the freedom of the market. At the same
time, I am very unhappy about the conceptual restrictions imposed on
the players in the market. This originates from the assumption that
entrepreneurs are one-dimensional human beings, who are dedicated to
one mission in their business lives to maximize profit. This interpretation
of capitalism insulates the entrepreneurs from all political, emotional,
social, spiritual, environmental dimensions of their lives. This was
done perhaps as a reasonable simplification, but it stripped away the
very essentials of human life.
Human beings are a wonderful creation embodied with limitless human
qualities and capabilities. Our theoretical constructs should make room
for the blossoming of those qualities, not assume them away.
Many of the world's problems exist because of this restriction on the
players of free-market. The world has not resolved the problem of crushing
poverty that half of its population suffers. Healthcare remains out
of the reach of the majority of the world population. The country with
the richest and freest market fails to provide healthcare for one-fifth
of its population.
We have remained so impressed by the success of the free-market that
we never dared to express any doubt about our basic assumption. To make
it worse, we worked extra hard to transform ourselves, as closely as
possible, into the one-dimensional human beings as conceptualized in
the theory, to allow smooth functioning of free market mechanism.
By defining "entrepreneur" in a broader way we can change
the character of capitalism radically, and solve many of the unresolved
social and economic problems within the scope of the free market. Let
us suppose an entrepreneur, instead of having a single source of motivation
(such as, maximizing profit), now has two sources of motivation, which
are mutually exclusive, but equally compelling a) maximization of profit
and b) doing good to people and the world.
Each type of motivation will lead to a separate kind of business. Let
us call the first type of business a profit-maximizing business, and
the second type of business as social business. Social business will
be a new kind of business introduced in the market place with the objective
of making a difference in the world. Investors in the social business
could get back their investment, but will not take any dividend from
the company. Profit would be ploughed back into the company to expand
its outreach and improve the quality of its product or service. A social
business will be a non-loss, non-dividend company.
Once social business is recognized in law, many existing companies will
come forward to create social businesses in addition to their foundation
activities. Many activists from the non-profit sector will also find
this an attractive option. Unlike the non-profit sector where one needs
to collect donations to keep activities going, a social business will
be self-sustaining and create surplus for expansion since it is a non-loss
enterprise. Social business will go into a new type of capital market
of its own, to raise capital.
Young people all around the world, particularly in rich countries, will
find the concept of social business very appealing since it will give
them a challenge to make a difference by using their creative talent.
Many young people today feel frustrated because they cannot see any
worthy challenge, which excites them, within the present capitalist
world. Socialism gave them a dream to fight for. Young people dream
about creating a perfect world of their own.
Almost all social and economic problems of the world will be addressed
through social businesses. The challenge is to innovate business models
and apply them to produce desired social results cost-effectively and
efficiently. Healthcare for the poor, financial services for the poor,
information technology for the poor, education and training for the
poor, marketing for the poor, renewable energy - these are all exciting
areas for social businesses.
Social business is important because it addresses very vital concerns
of mankind. It can change the lives of the bottom 60 per cent of world
population and help them to get out of poverty.
Grameen's Social Business
Even profit maximizing companies can be designed as social businesses
by giving full or majority ownership to the poor. This constitutes a
second type of social business. Grameen Bank falls under this category
of social business.
The poor could get the shares of these companies as gifts by donors,
or they could buy the shares with their own money. The borrowers with
their own money buy Grameen Bank shares, which cannot be transferred
to non-borrowers. A committed professional team does the day-to-day
running of the bank.
Bilateral and multi-lateral donors could easily create this type of
social business. When a donor gives a loan or a grant to build a bridge
in the recipient country, it could create a "bridge company"
owned by the local poor. A committed management company could be given
the responsibility of running the company. Profit of the company will
go to the local poor as dividend, and towards building more bridges.
Many infrastructure projects, like roads, highways, airports, seaports,
utility companies could all be built in this manner.
Grameen has created two social businesses of the first type. One is
a yogurt factory, to produce fortified yogurt to bring nutrition to
malnourished children, in a joint venture with Danone. It will continue
to expand until all malnourished children of Bangladesh are reached
with this yogurt. Another is a chain of eye-care hospitals. Each hospital
will undertake 10,000 cataract surgeries per year at differentiated
prices to the rich and the poor.
Social Stock Market
To connect investors with social businesses, we need to create social
stock market where only the shares of social businesses will be traded.
An investor will come to this stock-exchange with a clear intention
of finding a social business, which has a mission of his liking. Anyone
who wants to make money will go to the existing stock-market.
To enable a social stock-exchange to perform properly, we will need
to create rating agencies, standardization of terminology, definitions,
impact measurement tools, reporting formats, and new financial publications,
such as, The Social Wall Street Journal. Business schools will offer
courses and business management degrees on social businesses to train
young managers how to manage social business enterprises in the most
efficient manner, and, most of all, to inspire them to become social
business entrepreneurs themselves.
Role of Social Businesses in Globalisation
I support globalization and believe it can bring more benefits to the
poor than its alternative. But it must be the right kind of globalization.
To me, globalization is like a hundred-lane highway criss-crossing the
world. If it is a free-for-all highway, its lanes will be taken over
by the giant trucks from powerful economies. Bangladeshi rickshaw will
be thrown off the highway. In order to have a win-win globalization
we must have traffic rules, traffic police, and traffic authority for
this global highway. Rule of "strongest takes it all" must
be replaced by rules that ensure that the poorest have a place and piece
of the action, without being elbowed out by the strong. Globalization
must not become financial imperialism.
Powerful multi-national social businesses can be created to retain the
benefit of globalization for the poor people and poor countries. Social
businesses will either bring ownership to the poor people, or keep the
profit within the poor countries, since taking dividends will not be
their objective. Direct foreign investment by foreign social businesses
will be exciting news for recipient countries. Building strong economies
in the poor countries by protecting their national interest from plundering
companies will be a major area of interest for the social businesses.
We Create What We Want
We get what we want, or what we don't refuse. We accept the fact that
we will always have poor people around us, and that poverty is part
of human destiny. This is precisely why we continue to have poor people
around us. If we firmly believe that poverty is unacceptable to us,
and that it should not belong to a civilized society, we would have
built appropriate institutions and policies to create a poverty-free
world.
We wanted to go to the moon, so we went there. We achieve what we want
to achieve. If we are not achieving something, it is because we have
not put our minds to it. We create what we want.
What we want and how we get to it depends on our mindsets. It is extremely
difficult to change mindsets once they are formed. We create the world
in accordance with our mindset. We need to invent ways to change our
perspective continually and reconfigure our mindset quickly as new knowledge
emerges. We can reconfigure our world if we can reconfigure our mindset.
We Can Put Poverty in the Museums
I believe that we can create a poverty-free world because poverty is
not created by poor people. It has been created and sustained by the
economic and social system that we have designed for ourselves; the
institutions and concepts that make up that system; the policies that
we pursue.
Poverty is created because we built our theoretical framework on assumptions
which under-estimates human capacity, by designing concepts, which are
too narrow (such as concept of business, credit- worthiness, entrepreneurship,
employment) or developing institutions, which remain half-done (such
as financial institutions, where poor are left out). Poverty is caused
by the failure at the conceptual level, rather than any lack of capability
on the part of people.
I firmly believe that we can create a poverty-free world if we collectively
believe in it. In a poverty-free world, the only place you would be
able to see poverty is in the poverty museums. When school children
take a tour of the poverty museums, they would be horrified to see the
misery and indignity that some human beings had to go through. They
would blame their forefathers for tolerating this inhuman condition,
which existed for so long, for so many people. A human being is born
into this world fully equipped not only to take care of him or herself,
but also to contribute to enlarging the well being of the world as a
whole. Some get the chance to explore their potential to some degree,
but many others never get any opportunity, during their lifetime, to
unwrap the wonderful gift they were born with. They die unexplored and
the world remains deprived of their creativity, and their contribution.
Grameen has given me an unshakeable faith in the creativity of human
beings. This has led me to believe that human beings are not born to
suffer the misery of hunger and poverty. To me poor people are like
bonsai trees. When you plant the best seed of the tallest tree in a
flower-pot, you get a replica of the tallest tree, only inches tall.
There is nothing wrong with the seed you planted, only the soil-base
that is too inadequate. Poor people are bonsai people. There is nothing
wrong in their seeds. Simply, society never gave them the base to grow
on. All it needs to get the poor people out of poverty for us to create
an enabling environment for them. Once the poor can unleash their energy
and creativity, poverty will disappear very quickly.
Let us join hands to give every human being a fair chance to unleash
their energy and creativity. Let me conclude by expressing my deep gratitude
to the Norwegian Nobel Committee for recognizing that poor people, and
especially poor women, have both the potential and the right to live
a decent life, and that microcredit helps to unleash that potential.
I believe this honor that you give us will inspire many more bold initiatives
around the world to make a historical breakthrough in ending global
poverty.
Thank you very much
Muhammad Yunus
[ENDS]
-----Original Message-----
From: Intelligence Unit
Sent: 09 December 2006 09:35
To: 'atca.members@mi2g.com'
Subject: Response: Elkington - New Lessons from Success of Social Entrepreneurship;
Howell - Energy Security, Addressing Climate Chaos & Lifting Billions
from Poverty; HRH - Accounting For Sustainability
Dear ATCA Colleagues
[Please note that the views presented by individual contributors are
not necessarily representative of the views of ATCA, which is neutral.
ATCA conducts collective Socratic dialogue on global opportunities and
threats.]
We are grateful to:
. John Elkington, Founder and Chief Entrepreneur, SustainAbility for
"New Lessons to be learnt from the Success of Social Entrepreneurship";
and
. The Lord Howell of Guildford from The Palace of Westminster for "Energy
Security, Addressing Climate Chaos and Lifting Billions out of Poverty"
for their response to ATCA in regard to HRH Prince Charles, The Prince
of Wales's new initiative "Costing The Earth - The Accounting For
Sustainability" launched at St James's Palace, London, on 6th December
2006.
John Elkington has worked in the environmental and sustainable development
fields since 1972. A co-founder and then Managing Director of Environmental
Data Services (ENDS) in 1978, he also co-founded SustainAbility in 1987.
He served as the organisation's Chairman from 1995 to 2005, and is now
Chief Entrepreneur. He chairs the Export Credits Guarantee Department's
Advisory Council and The Environment Foundation, and sits on advisory
boards of organisations like the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes in
Switzerland and Instituto Ethos in Brazil. In 2004, BusinessWeek described
him as "a Dean of the Corporate Responsibility movement for Three
Decades." John has authored or co-authored 16 books, including
1988's million-selling Green Consumer Guide and Cannibals with Forks:
The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business (1997), and has written
or co-written some 40 published reports. One current project is a book
on social entrepreneurs with Pamela Hartigan of The Schwab Foundation.
He is also working closely with The Skoll Foundation on a new 3-year
field-building programme in relation to social entrepreneurship. He
writes:
Dear DK and Colleagues
Re: New Lessons to be learnt from the Success of Social Entrepreneurship
One of the odder aspects of the launch of HRH Prince Charles's "Accounting
for Sustainability" at St James's Palace on 6 December was seeing
the splendidly attired Cardinal Richelieu, who died in 1642, glowering
over the shoulder of Lord Browne of BP. Lord Browne, as you explained
in your ATCA posting the same day, was addressing "an exclusive
forum attended by parliamentarians, business executives, heads of relevant
NGOs, religious and community leaders, academics and philanthropists."
In trawling through the linked website of Accounting for Sustainability,
we were pleased to see our long-standing work on the triple bottom line
agenda and on best practice in corporate sustainability (or non-financial)
reporting used as part of the foundations for what happens next.
And it was also fascinating to see how conflicted the speakers were
in terms of seeing accountants as potential revolutionaries. Lord Browne
admitted that some of his best friends and most valued colleagues are
accountants. Still, it was clear that he had a bone or two to pick with
the breed. He explained that the main problem with accountancy, at least
as currently practised, is that it tends to be backward-looking. To
be really useful, he stressed -- particularly at a time when threats
like climate chaos are growing apace -- it needs to become much more
forward-looking, leaning into the future.
As speaker followed speaker, among them the heads of major accounting
firms like KPMG and PwC, the expression on Richelieu's face remained
impassive, grim, disapproving even -- largely because he was present
in the form of a massive oil painting hung on the silk-lined wall behind
the podium. I admit that the Cardinal first caught my eye because of
the sheer pomp and majesty of the painting, and the magnificence of
Richelieu's robes and hat, but then I recalled that he was once one
of the most reviled politicians in England. Today, true, the man who
turned France's aristocracy into the equivalent of caged pheasants,
condemning them to strut out their limited lives in the Palace of Versailles
specially built to house them, is perhaps best remembered as the villain
in films like 1993's The Three Musketeers. But there is an aspect of
Richelieu's career that is too easily overlooked. Whatever his intentions,
he drove a key community of entrepreneurs out of France, denting that
country's longer term economic fortunes. Richelieu's assaults on the
Huguenots forced many survivors to flee to countries like England, and
some of their descendants helped fuel our own Industrial Revolution.
The challenge now is to do the reverse, to build the conditions necessary
to inspire and support a new generation of social and environmental
entrepreneurs. The greening of accounting and of valuation is a key
part of our challenge, clearly, but it is in the very nature of accountants
that they tend to follow rather than lead.
Solutions to the sustainability challenges the world now faces come
in various forms. Some are compliance-driven -- and as a result often
addressed grudgingly. Some are citizenship-led, but too often handled
at a distance from the core business. And some are truly innovative
and entrepreneurial. As an environmental entrepreneur himself, with
his highly successful Duchy Originals business, Prince Charles surely
recognises the vital role of innovators and entrepreneurs in blowing
away the old, unsustainable order and opening up the opportunity spaces
in which more sustainable, more equitable economic and business models
can flourish. But this side of the story didn't come across at this
particular event, despite the fact that some notable entrepreneurs were
in the audience, among them Tim Smit of The Eden Project.
Much of the work that sustainability-minded accountants and other service
providers do tries to help corporations that aspire to behave - and
be recognized - as good citizens. In some cases, as in the aftermath
of the 2004 tsunami, some corporations have gone to extraordinary lengths
to help out those in distress. But there is a growing sense that, even
with the best will in the world, current approaches to corporate citizenship
are not going to save the world from poverty, hunger and disease, let
alone from environmental challenges like the collapse of major fisheries,
the loss of tropical forests and climate change. The key issues are
the replicability and scalability of the solutions on offer - and many
citizenship-driven approaches, putting it bluntly, fail to make the
cut.
And that's a key reason why attention is increasingly turning to social
and environmental entrepreneurs. The extraordinary potential of the
work such people do has become increasingly evident, for example with
Kenya's Wangari Maathai of the Green Belt Movement winning the 2004
Nobel Peace Prize for her work on reafforestation, and now Muhammad
Yunus winning the 2006 Prize for his attempts to make poverty history.
The world, it seems, is beginning to sit up and notice things that have
been building - like Yunus's microfinance organization, The Grameen
Bank -- for at least three decades.
The potential is vast. As Professor Yunus said a few years back, "We
have created a slavery-free world, a polio-free world, an apartheid-free
word. Creating a poverty-free world would be greater than all these
accomplishments while at the same time reinforcing them. This world
would be a world that we could be proud to live in." And the central
point here is that people like Maathai and Yunus are now actively delivering
the goods - and services - needed by the poor.
Strikingly, meanwhile, even the best corporate reporters still lag quite
some way behind leading social entrepreneurs - and the foundations that
fund them - in terms of understanding how to build and capture social
and environmental return on investment. In the latest round of SustainAbility's
Global Reporters benchmarking survey, focusing on best practice in corporate
sustainability reporting worldwide, we spotlight this very problem.
But we also uncover a major shift in best practice reporting, with leading
companies shifting from corporate citizenship to risk management, and
from risk management to growing attempts to assess and value new sustainability-linked
opportunities for value creation.
As the interplay between the worlds of mainstream business and social
entrepreneurship grows, as in the summit meetings of the World Economic
Forum, we see growing potential for fruitful cross-fertilization. This
is something we look at in a new SustainAbility business primer, Scalable
Solutions, which explores potential lessons to be learned from the growing
success of social entrepreneurship.
Given how sceptical some of our mainstream corporate clients were when,
earlier in 2006, we first announced our 3-year, Skoll Foundation-funded
expedition into social enterprise territory, we clearly have much work
to do to convince some business people that the growing focus on entrepreneurial
solutions to sustainability challenges could easily outstrip the corporate
citizenship movement within a few short years. But we conclude that
there are at least four reasons mainstream business should pay attention
to what social entrepreneurs are doing.
First, market intelligence. As interest in base-of-the-pyramid markets
grows, social entrepreneurs are experimenting with new business models,
services and products in many of the markets that major companies are
beginning to take seriously. Second, at a time when success in tackling
many of the great divides between rich and poor seems virtually out
of reach, leading social entrepreneurs are plunging in, taking risks
that few if any major companies would dare to take, and - in some cases
- beginning to attract significant funding and other forms of support.
Third, social entrepreneurs potentially offer greater leverage than
traditional non-profit partners. Significantly, too, partnerships between
major businesses and social enterprises hold the promise of better scalability.
And, fourth, most metrics in the corporate social responsibility and
sustainable development fields today tend to focus on policies, systems
and procedures, rather than on performance, impacts and outcomes. By
contrast, the major foundations that are investing in social entrepreneurship
are increasingly requiring evidence of impacts and outcomes. Over time,
expect such approaches to erupt into the mainstream.
Best wishes
John Elkington
[ENDS]
-----Original Message-----
From: Intelligence Unit
Sent: 07 December 2006 11:02
To: 'atca.members@mi2g.com'
Subject: Response: The Lord Howell of Guildford "Energy Security,
Addressing Climate Chaos and Lifting Billions out of Poverty";
HRH Prince Charles "The Accounting For Sustainability"
Dear ATCA Colleagues
[Please note that the views presented by individual contributors are
not necessarily representative of the views of ATCA, which is neutral.
ATCA conducts collective Socratic dialogue on global opportunities and
threats.]
We are grateful to The Lord Howell of Guildford from The Palace of Westminster
for "Energy Security, Addressing Climate Chaos and Lifting Billions
out of Poverty" for his response to ATCA in regard to HRH Prince
Charles, The Prince of Wales's new initiative "Costing The Earth
- The Accounting For Sustainability" launched at St James's Palace,
London, yesterday.
The Right Honourable Lord (David) Howell of Guildford, President of
the British Institute of Energy Economics, is a former Secretary of
State for Energy and for Transport in the UK Government and an economist
and journalist. Lord Howell is Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the
House of Lords and Conservative Spokesman on Foreign Affairs. He also
Chairs the Windsor Energy Group. Until 2002 he was Chairman of the UK-Japan
21st Century Group, (the high level bilateral forum between leading
UK and Japanese politicians, industrialists and academics), which was
first set up by Margaret Thatcher and Yasuhiro Nakasone in 1984. In
addition he writes a fortnightly column for The JAPAN TIMES in Tokyo,
and has done so since 1985. He also writes regularly for the International
Herald Tribune. David Howell was the Chairman of the House of Commons
Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, 1987-97. He was Chairman of the
House of Lords European Sub-Committee on Common Foreign and Security
Policy from 1999-2000. In 2001 he was awarded the Grand Cordon of the
Order of the Sacred Treasure (Japan). He writes:
Dear DK and Colleagues
Re: Energy Security, Addressing Climate Chaos and Lifting Billions out
of Poverty
I have a comment on HRH's excellent initiative as discussed on ATCA.
It is as follows:
Getting businesses to account more precisely for their external costs,
and even more ambitiously, getting them to change their behaviour in
response to the knowledge this cost information -- when properly organized
and visualised -- throws up, is a fascinating idea. But the message
has perhaps to be in even more compelling and immediate terms if it
is really to change our global direction -- and therefore needs to be
based as much on hard economics as on long term aspirations and concerns.
The two must ride together.
The real issue is this: billions of people in China and India are trying
to lift themselves out of desperate poverty. To do so they need massive
amounts of cheap and reliable energy -- the bulk of it probably from
burning coal. Can they have both energy security and climate security?
Can they have the adequate and affordable energy they need to develop
and yet avoid the environmental harm to the planet caused by consuming
it?
That is the question. Not to address this central issue is to jeopardise
both urgent and immediate energy security concerns world-wide AND to
undermine longer-term hopes for a cleaner, greener world. Not to face
it squarely is indeed to remain "beyond the fringe."
Can this be done? Can both goals be attained? The answer is Yes, provided
a vast range of highly complex and interwoven energy and environmental
issues, both near-term and very long-term, are handled with skill, with
open and practical policy realism and with patience.
A forthcoming book -- Energy Labyrinth -- by myself and Dr Carole Nakhle,
to be published in the Spring, suggests a way forward in the following
terms: "a greener, cleaner, safer future is possible, but not under
present policies or with current priorities. The fight against global
warming can make progress, but only if the much more immediate dangers
to energy security are openly recognized and vigorously addressed."
The book exposes the myths and fallacies in the current energy debate
- which could undermine all hopes for a greener future and for checking
climate chaos. It offers a highly detailed guide to the changed approaches,
both in high policy and in everyday life, needed to chart the way out
of today's formidably complex energy labyrinth.
Best wishes
David Howell
[ENDS]
-----Original Message-----
From: Intelligence Unit
Sent: 06 December 2006 20:25
To: 'atca.members@mi2g.com'
Subject: HRH The Prince of Wales: Launching a Green Revolution "Costing
The Earth - The Accounting For Sustainability"
Dear ATCA Colleagues
[Please note that the views presented by individual contributors are
not necessarily representative of the views of ATCA, which is neutral.
ATCA conducts collective Socratic dialogue on global opportunities and
threats.]
HRH The Prince of Wales: Launching a Green Revolution "Costing
The Earth - The Accounting For Sustainability"
His Royal Highness Prince Charles, The Prince of Wales launched his
"Costing The Earth - The Accounting For Sustainability" project
at an exclusive forum at St James's Palace today attended by parliamentarians,
business executives, heads of relevant NGOs, religious and community
leaders, academics and philanthropists.
In a forthright speech in front of leading figures, including British
Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Prince said, "We are consuming the
resources of our planet at such a rate that we are, in effect, living
off credit and living on borrowed time... it is our children and grandchildren
who will have to pay off this debt and we owe it to them and ourselves
to do something about it before it is too late." Other speakers
included The Bishop of London Richard Chartres; Lord Browne, Chief Executive
of BP; and former US Vice President Al Gore.
Prince Charles said, "There was a time when we could say that there
was either a complete lack of knowledge, or at least room for doubt,
about the consequences for our planet of our actions. That time has
gone. We now know all too clearly what we are actually doing and that
we need to do something about it urgently. Better accounting must be
part of that process."
Al Gore praised Prince Charles's green initiative in a video message
to the forum. He said it may be "one of the most important initiatives"
and stressed, "We need to continue the effort to solve the climate
crisis."
The British Royals are taking the matter of "Launching a Green
Revolution" increasingly seriously: The Prince is set to label
all his Duchy Originals range with details of greenhouse gases made
during their production. Her Majesty The Queen has already gone green
at Windsor Castle with a plan to use hydroelectric power. HRH The Duke
of Edinburgh uses a taxi cab fuelled by liquid petroleum gas to travel
around London, while water in a bore hole at Buckingham Palace is used
to supply air conditioning to the Queen's gallery before topping up
the water levels in the Palace lake.
[ENDS]
