Re-engineering the Environment

In a twist an conventional wisdom, business leaders and green activists are finding they have much in common, reports James Geary

Since the early 1970s. The traditional animosity between profit-minded business barons and tree-hugging environmentalists has had something of the inevitabitivy and permanence of the Russian/Amirican standoff during the Cold War. But in a world where the Berlin Wall fell and the infamous Iron Curtain rusted and collapsed, anything seems possible, even a new World Order in which corporations and ecological activists make strange - yet compatible - bedfellows.

Take the World Wide Fund for Nature's 95 Group, for example. Formed in 1991 by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and a collection of UK companies, this alliance seeks to enhance and upgrade forest management standards through the application of market pressure. The WWF 95 Group, now boasting 54 members, including such British household names as Tesco and J. Sainsbury, is responding to consumer concerns about the world's dwindling forests by establishing a labelling system that confers and environmental seal of approval on selected goods.

Or, consider the international insurance industry's recent conversion to the environmental cause. Currently suffering enormous 1osses due to an increase in natural disasters, insurers concede that they could face financial extinction from the rising waters and unpredictable storms associated with climatic change.

Environmental accounting

The advent of 'ecological bookkeeping' has paralleled these exercises in consciousness - and profit - raising. As corporate environmental awareness takes hold, more and more companies are including this type of environmental annual report as part of their yearly accounts. In 1990, the information technology and software concern BSO/Origin became the first European firm to include an environmental accounting in its annual report. Based in Utrecht, The Netherlands, BSO/Origin reckons its environmental debits and credits by calculating extracted value', the burden its activities and products place on the ecosystem throughout their life-cycles. This burden is expressed in financial terms based on the theoretical costs of either devising a sustainable alternative or reversing the environmental damage caused by a product.

Although not all the factors in this equation are quantifiable, the company's founder and recently retired CEO, Eckart Wintzen Believes that ecological bookkeeping is an important first step in the management of corporate environmental impact. "Just a No business can be successfully run without precise accounting practices," he explains, ' "environmental resources cannot be sustained without 'accurate ecological bookkeeping. We have to face the fact that the only real driving force in the world is business. Simple 'deal ism isn't going to get us anywhere."

Growing a business

After years spearheading the environmental cause from the prow of an inflatable boat, former Greenpeace International executive director Paul Gilding is now busy growing a business. Since risigning from Greenpeace International in June of 1994, Australian-born Gilding has turned the standard corporate equation environmental problem business problem completely on its head. Strange as it may seem, this one-time environmental confrontationalist with two decades of activist experience under his belt now believes that business will be the key driving force behind global environmental protection in the next century.

Paras Ecos - made up of Gilding and Paras Ltd., an international management and technology consultancy with offices. In the UK, South Africa, The Netherlands and the US - was founded to bridge the gap between what Gilding calls the first wave of environmentalism - consciousness-raising, and the second - behavior change. To this end, Paras Ecos works from within business' own ethic by helping corporations maximize the commercial and competitive advantages that 'going green' can afford.

German-born Thilo Bode. Gilding's former comrade-in-arms and successor as Greenpeace International's executive director, is forging similar alliances with business. Trained as an economist, Bode spent his pre-Greenpeace years as a strategic planner for a German metal-working firm. When he became director of Greenpeace Germany in 1989, Bode used his business experience to collaborate with industry

Greenfreeze refrigerator

In Germany, Bode pioneered what has come to be known as 'solutions-oriented' campaigning: offering the corporate targets of Greenpeace protests positive alternatives to their environmental problems. The most successful campaign of this nature has been the Greenfreeze refrigerator, a greener refrigeration system using benign chemicals instead of ozone-depleting fluorocarbons.

Bode has carried this collaborative approach over into his work at Greenpeace. He notes that, with some four million dues-paying members and 30 regional offices worldwide, Greenpeace looks more and more like the corporate giants it takes on. "Greenpeace has 30 different national offices around the world in 30 different stages of organizational development," he says. "To operate effectively on a global scale, we have to change our culture. There have to be clear procedures for decision-making and clear lines of responsibility and accountability. The real challenge facing us now is to work together with a shared vision of our role in society and our environmental objectives. No amount of management skill will help us if wedon't have this shared vision."

"The real challenge facing us now is to work together with a shared vision of our environmental objectives." - Thilo, Bode