faulker031

Upon landing in Toronto Saturday I could already see it: The G20 heads of states are in town and their modest means of transportation were neatly parked at Pearson International Airport: Obama's Air Force One, Two Jumbojets each for the Chinese, Japanese and Saudi-Arabian Heads of state, Merkel's and Sarkozy's relatively modest Airbuses, and – how cute – the Virgin Atlantic A340 which must have shipped the new British PM Cameron to TO. Telling array of status symbols... I t looked somewhat different in downtown Toronto. The entire centre, where the convention place for the G20 is located, was fenced off with a 3m high wall – reminding me of my childhood playing next to the Berlin Wall. There was a sizable number of protesters out there – but many thousands more of police. The city was a fortress. The G20 is another 'tool' of global governance, similar to the Global Compact. But while the Compact receives only scant attention from the public, the G20 is a major even...

For the past two and half days I've felt a strange tension in this conference. It is about the thorny question of whether ethics pays. The business case for CSR. The harmony between economic, social and ecological sustainability. Most of the time panellists and speakers were hammering it home that joining the UN Global Compact and implementing the principles just makes good business sense. I had a very lively conversation with Peter Solmssen, Executive VP of Siemens about this, who joined the company recently as part of the revamp of the board in the aftermath of the corruption scandals. He was fairly bullish that fighting corruption makes good business sense, 'we are more profitable now' he argued. He argued that in most countries big conglomerates like Siemens or General Electric are doing business with public purchasers who at the top level are not interested in corruption, and that companies who are known for not engaging in it, in fact have a competitive advantage. Hi...

One of the benefits of going to big global conferences is that you meet old colleagues and friends. So I was very pleased to bump into Peter Lacy (now Managing Director Accenture, Sustainability Services, Europe, Africa and Latin America). I enjoyed working with Peter while he was Exec. Director at EABIS (an association of businesses and academic institutions to boost CSR in Europe) and built up the organization in the early/mid 2000s. Peter was here, among other things, to present a Survey on CEO perceptions of the Sustainability topic which I mentioned earlier in another post. I won't bore you with some of the bickering raised here (too small sam ple of 'converted' companies, CEO rhetoric is no data etc.) since it does not jeopardize the main message of the research: that sustainability is now clearly on the strategic agenda of many major companies and in fact 93% of surveyed CEOs globally see this as a key imperative. No more just an 'issue', a blip on the scr...

This morning the Summit opened. It was a well organized and well choreographed session. Our ten year old is a well behaved boy indeed (sorry for masculin-izing the UNGC, I just go by the blue colour of the UN...). Ban-Ki Moon opened, followed by a number of panellists and it were the usual, well meaning speeches by many leaders in business, and civil society. Moon announced the goal of raising the membership from currently 8,000 to 20,000 by 2020. Bloomberg ventured to step out of his role as Mayor and into that of a concerned citizen by pointing to two of the major challenges for future sustainability: 1bn deaths due to tobacco consumption over the next decade, and a similar level of road fatalities, given the current trends in automotive growth. These were quite daunting, but nevertheless refreshing new angles on the issues. Maybe i am hanging out too much on conferences that my ears are by now a bit teflonized for much of the sustainability rhetoric. But reflecting back on this ope...

See it here: http://www.un.org/webcast/globalcompact/leaderssummit2010/

Those of you who have followed this blog and our work over the last years will know that we have taken a special interest in the political role of private corporations. So what are the vibes here at the UN Global Compact Summit? Well, the general gist seems to be that most of whom are quite happy to pass on more responsibility for the environment, human rights etc. (i.e. the ten principles) to the private sector. The most poignant role in this probably put forward by the UK's new Minister for International Development, Alan Duncan. I liked him when I lived in the UK, but was a bit underwhelmed by what he said. Basically he is a pink Thatcherite, talking about shareholder value and how companies can combine this with development. He ducked questions on BP and whether there is a role for governments in preventing these disasters, which was a bit weak, I found. A refreshing accent was set by Mike Bloomberg and what the City of New York is doing. He was kind of cool, I found, saying th...

Ten year olds are in a funny age. Not quite children anymore, they are not grown ups either. They have learned the basics, reading and writing and calculus - but there is still a lot ahead of them. I like the metaphor for the UN Global Compact ten year anniversary Summit. In the opening ceremony it became quite clear that indeed much has been achieved. To talk about business responsiblities is now widely legitmate and the guest list shows, that many companies have grown with it. This is also visible in who - next to Ban-Ki Moon (UN Secretary General) - was invited to give the major talk in this afternoon's opening ceremony: Wang Zhongyu, President, China Enterprise Confederation - China of all countries. Its nice that ten year olds still don't care too much about what the world around them thinks. And in fact one has to give Chinese businesses in the UNGC a lot of credit, certainly for their commitment and also for successes. CSR is a world full of ambiguities, but today China...