The first real brush many South African companies had with sustainable development occurred in the build-up to the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), held in Johannesburg in 2002.
Suddenly, corporate communications managers were rushing around the countryside looking for sustainable development case studies, desperate to incorporate the politically correct terminology into their corporate visions, policy statements and goals and objectives. In other companies, executives were pondering how to bend their safety, health and environment (SHE) policies and programmes to fit into their idea of a sustainable development pigeon hole.
However, for the majority of businesses, WSSD came and went and sustainable development hardly touched them.
World summit
Did WSSD do any good? Yes, of course it did. WSSD was one of the best corporate and community environmental and sustainability education exercises that could have been hoped for. For many, it was the first time they started to understand what the concept was all about. After all, it was hammered down our throats day and night for 12 days, as well as during the three-month lead time beforehand.
For some, it put the SHE philosophies into a clearer perspective and through the repeated, almost indoctrinating, queue of case studies and practical examples that were pumped out from all over the world, it started to shift the notion that ‘environment” was only about flowers and trees and saving the rhinoceros.
Some cynics argue that the global corporate sector hijacked WSSD, smothering it in greenwash (disinformation disseminated by an organisation to present an environmentally responsible public image) and masses of complex, un-synthesised, technical information, preventing a clear picture to emerge as to just how seriously (or otherwise) the sector had taken sustainable development.
The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), using vast global corporate muscle and resources, put enormous effort into justifying its actions in the corporate global marketplace. Perhaps, looking back to the Earth Summit in 1992 and the Stockholm conference of 1972, global business collectively recognised that something had to be said about what it had done for society, even if the results did not always match up to radical expectations.
South Africa
What about South Africa? Many corporations have been plodding on with environmental issues since the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. Having had success with environmental policies, some have moved on to SHE policies, sometimes progressing to SHEQ (safety, health, environment and quality) policies, and finally a small number have faced the beast called sustainable development.
Many can materially demonstrate that the new policies have made a difference and an improvement. However, it must be said that pressures from the global marketplace, suddenly opened up after democratisation, confronted many companies with customers who asked searching questions about safety, health, environment, social policies, corporate social responsibility and quality before they would entertain any notion of giving orders or doing business.
This external pressure probably did more than anything else to focus South Africa’s captains of industry on this strange new doctrine called sustainable development and recognise that it was going to change the way they did business forever.
In practice
In the main, companies have tried to use the adoption of ISO 14001, the International Standards Organisation’s model standard for environmental management systems, as ‘proof” that they have taken on the ‘environmental” mantra and are heading for sustainable development.
Very few companies really understand what sustainable development is or how they can conform to the ‘triple bottom line” ethic (so named to reflect that in addition to the financial bottom line of profit, there are also social and environmental bottom lines that must be achieved).
An interesting and mischievous corporate interpretation of sustainable development is that it is a description of a process that attempts to maximise unrestrained development for as long as possible, to make as much profit as possible, under the most laissez faire circumstances.
The appropriate and accepted description of sustainable development is that it is ‘development that meets the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” (From World Commission on Environment & Development: Our Common Future, Oxford University Press, 1987.)
Current hurdles
The biggest hurdle that has faced many corporations in South Africa is understanding the simple fact that pollution and waste are costing them money, and that having environmental management systems, SHE policies and sustainable development visions are a means of cutting costs, improving competitiveness, increasing sales and optimising profits through improving the product : raw material ratio.
The battle to gain acceptance that environment is a part of business management and business planning is a monumental one and still has to be won. The common perception is that when the word ‘environment” is used anywhere near a factory, it is perceived to mean things to do with birds, flowers, animals and trees.
Unless this forms a part of the cost centre or budget code that pays for the greening of the verges outside the company gates, planting trees in the director’s garden, or paying for the annual corporate membership fees for a wildlife charity, it has nothing to do with the business of doing business.
The exclusion of environmental staff from the core decision-making process (such as the annual business plan brainstorming session) is a common circumstance. The fact that in some of the ‘dirtier” industries it is necessary to spend millions in capital projects to control pollution to meet legal requirements seems to be a side issue which is often only dealt with after the serious business of production targets and sales figures are finalised.
The tagging on of environmental impact assessments (EIAs) at the end of project feasibility studies – thus excluding the early identification of environmental fatal flaws – has resulted in the common perception that environmental concerns cost money because ‘they always result in EIAs having to be done before we can go ahead”. The idea that EIAs could actually save money, or reduce risk, or help produce better designs and solutions, rarely arises.
Ten years on
When sustainable development first emerged after the Earth Summit in 1992, it was seen by many organisations as a wonderful tool for corporate spin doctors. They could use it to weave a web of deceit to suggest that companies were actually doing something about reducing their impact on the environment, protecting their workers from injury and taking steps to alleviate the economic and social misery surrounding many of their operations.
Ten years on, the picture of corporate response to sustainable development is still a mixed one, but for different reasons. Now we see the spotlight focused on different areas of the corporate psyche and in a way which evokes different responses for different reasons.
Companies tend now to have a clear and visible conscience that translates into action. Social support tends to be more than just chequebook-driven and more thought is put into ways of assisting communities to assist themselves.
Environment has moved on to include mitigation and avoidance of pollution, proactive planning to reduce or avoid waste and a slow recognition that water is not ‘the universal solution to pollution through dilution”. The ‘workhouse” madness has disappeared and most companies have a genuine desire to keep their workers safe and healthy and to find ways of reducing SHE risk associated with their work.
What about sustainable development? The words are being used, some of the principles are being toyed with, but there are still very few boardrooms that use comments like ‘how do our production targets shape up to our commitments to reduce non-renewable resource usage?”, or ‘we need to re-think our energy strategies so that we can meet our Kyoto targets”, or ‘before we start talking capital expenditure for production expansion, what capital do we need to reduce our emissions, and cut back our effluents?”
Arend Hoogervorst is a corporate environmental and sustainability adviser