Archive

Saturday, July 28, 2007

APPLE’S EYE VIEW OF ELAINE

Playing around with Elaine’s Apple laptop this afternoon, this resulted. Not a great photo, but I liked it, even so.

Friday, July 27, 2007

A PASSION FOR PETER SCOTT

This evening, we watched BBC2’s Peter Scott: A Passion for Nature – and found it profoundly moving. I last met Sir Peter in 1989, not long before his death, at an event in Guiting Power. My main memory, apart from his extraordinary personal charm, was the fact that he was wearing different coloured socks. It may have been intentional. In any event, he had also been one of the judges when I received a 1981 Churchill Fellowship, and wonderfully supportive. But my biggest debt to him was via WWF, which he co-founded. In the programme this evening, David Attenborough called Scott “the patron saint of conservation”, and – as explained elsewhere – the launch of WWF is the main reason I switched on to the conservation cause, in 1961. I confess both to a passion for Sir Peter and to other conservationists of his generation, notably Max Nicholson.

Thursday, July 26, 2007

SOFA TIMES

Entertaining session on the sofa this afternoon with Sam (Lakha), being photographed for a joint profile by The Times, for the Crème section. The shoot was only marginally disrupted by Kim and Kelly cackling on the margins. Then across with Elaine to have wonderful dinner with Sam and her husband, Sanjiev. Back in a taxi whose driver’s navigational skills made me think of the book Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, which Elaine gave me recently. Despite having two satnav systems, he headed east when he hit the Euston Road, rather than west. Later, he tried to drive up the entry ramp of Hammersmith bus station. And when we finally arrived back at Barnes Pond, his car was still sitting there as we walked out of sight, headlights staring blankly ahead, as though he had exhausted every sinew in getting us home. The Moon, meanwhile, hung low in the western sky, like a glowing pumpkin that had been left for too long on a surface, its left side strikingly less than a perfect circle.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

BATTLE OF BRITAIN MEMORIAL

Stepping off the Zephyr at Westminster Pier, I took Maggie and Ritu to see the Battle of Britain memorial on the Embankment, the first time I had seen it. Beautifully done – and very powerful. Moving to see Tim’s name there, too.

BY ZEPHYR TO THE THAMES BARRIER

After a spell of bad weather, with much of the western watershed of the Thames flooded, today dawned fine for our boat trip from Westminster Pier to the Thames Barrier, and back. This was an opportunity for subsets of the IDEO and SustainAbility teams to build on earlier discussions, both in London and San Francisco. The IDEO crew included Tim Brown, CEO, and Bob Adams, who leads their sustainability practice.

We were also joined by Peter Madden, Forum for the Future’s CEO, and Nick Robins, who helped me with our early work on corporate environmental reporting and has since gone on to become something of a star in the world of socially responsible investment. Thought of inviting him because of his book on the East India Company, whose roots can partly be found in this part of London. Sadly, two members of the crew failed to make it: Sophia Tickell of SustainAbility and Becky Buell of Oxfam, because they live in Oxford and floods (or at least fear of same) interrupted play.

We stopped near the Barrier to pick up Andy Batchelor of the Environment Agency, who told us the story of the project. I hadn’t realised that the Barrier has been raised 103 times to date. Given that it took 30 years to get this one built, from the disastrous floods of 1953 to the Barrier’s opening in 1983, it will be interesting to see how long we take to build its replacement – given that its design life only goes out to 2030, on present calculations. We also took a quick look at Thamesmead, much of which is technically under water, which Andy described as “a New Orleans waiting to happen.”

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

AMSTERDAM: TUG & WINGNUTS

Spent most of the time in Amsterdam in meetings, but earlier today Elaine and I took the morning off and enjoyed the city in bright sunshine – a delight after the downpours of recent days. Here are a few pictures of our adventures. Particularly liked some of the ships mooredaround the Nemo Science Centre (http://www.e-nemo.nl/?id=5&s=85&d=551&l=585), the Museum van Loon on the Keizersgracht(http://www.museumvanloon.nl/english/index_eng.htm) and our farewell lunch under the Hungarian wingnut trees at the Restaurant Janvier (http://www.proeflokaaljanvier.nl/), which we happily stumbled upon.

The waiter told us that there was shortly to be a vote on the wingnuts, which had been a gift to the square, but whose roots were lifting the paving stones/bricks all around. We left hoping that the vote goes in favour of the trees …

Hein’s stairs, with painted ‘carpet’

Sculpture in foyer of McKinsey HQ, where we had dinner on the top floor

Bridge to Nemo Science Centre

Backbone of Dutch trading empires

One of the boats I liked best – workaday, but upstanding

I liked the star – and the shadows

Prelude

Dancer

Graffiti

Forget-me-nots

Green Wheels, which Hein uses, I think

Window in Museum Van Loon

Staircase

Peacock reflects

Neighbouring roofscape

Lunch at Janvier, under the Hungarian wingnut trees

AFLATOUN

Elaine and I flew to Amsterdam on Sunday, though not without a few strains along the way – as Terminal 4’s baggage system collapsed, with the result that hundreds of people were marooned outside the terminal for ages. So a trip that should have taken a few hours ended up taking around ten, with the result that we arrived very late for dinner with friends, Hein and Helle Sas. Still, the evening made the trip more than worth while.

And so did our time over the next three days with Jeroo Billimoria and her team at Aflatoun. I first met Jerroo in the early days of my involvement with The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship and the World Economic Forum. The impact she has on people was demonstrated when we all attended a reception hosted by the Governors of the Dutch Central Bank – and the Bank’s president, Dr Nout Wellink, confessed publicly that he would have gladly given Jeroo anything when they first met, and all she had asked for was offices in the Bank’s headquarters. Which she promptly got.

A while back, Jeroo asked if I would chair Aflatoun’s impact metrics comittee, which I gladly agreed to do (http://www.aflatoun.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=61&Itemid=69). The inspiration for Aflatoun was Jeroo’s. An Indian national , she grew up and worked among the street children of Mumbai.

“Through this experience she came to the conclusion that a lack of basic knowledge about rights, responsibilities and finance is at the root of economic and social inequality,” Aflatoun says. “The Aflatoun concept is based on a very successful pilot in the western state of Maharastra, India, run by an organization called MelJol, in which they began to teach children in schools how to save money. Not only did this experience create awareness among the children of the benefits of saving and familiarity with the banking system, it also increased their sense of self-esteem and pride. Other positive side effects included improved math skills, improved school enrolment rates, and, in a totally unexpected reversal of the learning model, the parents of children in the program also began to save money. Now, five years later, approximately 83,700 Indian children have successfully learnt to save and spend money responsibly, participated in school-based micro-enterprises, and become socially conscious citizens.”

By the end of 2006, 11 countries were already piloting the Aflatoun Programme Child Social and Financial Education, over 3,000 teachers had been trained and over 100,000 children had been exposed to the Aflatoun concept.

Saturday, July 14, 2007

DOUGHTY CENTRE

Just in from a couple of days at the Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility at the Cranfield School of Management (http://www.som.cranfield.ac.uk/som/research/centres/ccr/), led by (Professor) David Grayson. Given that the avionics for the Harrier jump-jet were developed on the site, it struck me that what the assembled folk were trying to do was to develop the equivalent for the corporate responsibility agenda.

It was interesting that a number of external people taking part thought they picked up both a degree of confusion among the CR professionals in terms of desired outcomes from their work and also a sense of unease, which someone noted could either flow from the field’s “teenage angst” or the onset of a “mid-life crisis.” Looking at the average age in the room, it could have been the latter, but knowing David’s extraordinary energy and committment, I suspect that – for this group, at least – it was the former. Certainly I came away charged up, in contrast my reactions to several other recent events.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

NESTA’S £1M AWARD

Took part in a panel this evening launching NESTA’s new Environment Challenge – involving a £1 million award. NESTA is the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, which aims to help the UK lead the world in the application of knowledge, enterprise and creativity. Other panellists were James Wilsdon, Head of Science and Innovation at Demos and Sarah Butler-Sloss, Chair of the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy. The session was chaired by NESTA CEO Jonathan Kestenbaum. The event also launched a new report, The Disrupters, a NESTA/Demos publication on low-carbon innovation.

The theme of the report, by James Wilsdon, Becky Willis and Molly Web, is that “disruptive innovation creates products or business models that transform the landscape. The seeds of disruptive innovation for climate change are everywhere. From the rooftop wind turbines that hold out the promise of self-generated electricity in each household, to the new models of community ownership of energy assets, there are many innovations that have enormous potential. But these low-carbon pioneers tend to remain at the margins of our economy. By their very nature, disruptive innovations do not ‘fit’ easily within established regulatory or economic systems.” So the Demos project investigated how we can nurture and support ‘The Disrupters’: innovators and entrepreneurs who can bring about the step-changes required for low-carbon living. For more, see http://www.demos.co.uk/projects/disrupters/overview

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

SEED

Delightful session this afternoon with longstanding colleague Simone Amber, a social intrapreneur, who runs SEED (Schlumberger Excellence in Educational Development). See http://www.seed.slb.com/en/index.htm. This is a global non-profit education program serving students aged 10-18. SEED began in 1998 as a way for Schlumberger employees, spouses and retirees to share their time, experience and passion for learning and science through a variety of volunteer activities with younger generations of learners. It was involved in putting together the bathub indicator of climate change that Peter Senge presented at the Tallberg Forum (see July 3 entry and http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/watch/climate_change/challenge.htm).

Then, among other things, worked on our application for the Fast Company Social Capitalist Awards – which this year will embrace for-profits for the first time. Has to be in by the end of today.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

IS IT UP TO POLITICIANS TO SAVE US?

After belated cake with the team for my 58th birthday last month, across with Seb (Beloe) to the Green Alliance summer reception at the College of Physicians, in Regent’s Park. Great to meet up with a bunch of troublemakers, including people like John Sauven of Greenpeace, but utlimately I found the debate on the theme of ‘Is it up to politicians to save us?’ fatuous.

The panellists (http://www.green-alliance.org.uk/grea1.aspx?id=1894) struggled valiantly, counterposing ‘Yes it’s up to politicians’ with ‘No, green consumers can do it.’ Most of the panellists ended up supporting elements of both sides of the debate.

Still, managed to catch up with a number of interesting people afterwards on the College’s lawn, including London’s Deputy Mayor, Nicky Gavron. One of the things we discussed was the extraordinary C40 initiative, bringing major cities together around the world to tackle climate and related issues. If you don’t know about it, take a look at http://www.c40cities.org/

Spiralling cake

Giles (Chitty), Tom (Burke), Julia (Hailes)

Saturday, July 07, 2007

SKETCHES OF FRANK GEHRY

Source: Sony Classics

Hania took Elaine and I to the Soho Curzon today to see Sketches of Frank Gehry, Sydney Pollack’s stunning film focusing on the career and work of one of my favourite architects – alongside people like Buckminster Fuller. At one point in the film Gehry says that the high point of his life is when he faces a blank sheet of paper, about to launch forth into the unknown. Pretty much how I feel – and pretty much where I am. With only four of us in the theatre, a very private view.

Friday, July 06, 2007

JULIE’S BICYCLE

Started the day at the Berkeley Hotel, where a new social enterprise – Julie’s Bicycle (mission: ‘Taking the Heat out of Music’, http://juliesbicycle.trinitystreetdirect.com/) – was launching a campaign to involve the UK music industry in the fight against climate change. Led by Al Tickell (Sophia’s sister) and Jazz Summers of BigLife Management, Julie’s Bicycle has already commissioned Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute to investigate the carbon footprint of the music industry, with this autumn’s ‘Beat the Heat’ program designed to help all parts of the industry get their climate act together.

The aim is to harness some of the energy generated by events like tomorrow’s LiveEarth global music festival to drive change in the industry itself. And typically there are unlikely to be any single answers. As Al Gore himself has put it, we are talking not so much about silver bullets here as “silver buckshot.”

Apart from inputs from Jazz, Al and her uncle Sir Crispin Tickell, credited with waking up Al Gore and Margaret Thatcher to the risks of climate change, we also heard from Professor Chris Rapley, Director of the British Antarctic Survey. Strikingly, he brought in a shiny silver container, from which he extracted two circular samples of ice, drilled from the Antarctic ice-sheet. One of them dated back 38,000 years, if I heard right, to a time when we were still Cro-Magnons struggling to get a fire lighted in our caves, as Rapley put it. And it was extracted from around one kilometre down in the ice. Wonderfully strange feeling to touch ice dating from so long ago as the cores went around the Berkeley ballroom, under blazing chandeliers.

Sat on same table as Chris Morrison, who manages Damon Albarn – and hooked into the conversation when I heard him talking about an expletive-rich exchange he had had with Bob Geldof during the Live8 process, when Albarn criticised the lack of African musicians on stage. I noted I had watched the TV programme a few evenings focusing on Albarn’s new opera, Monkey: Journey to the West. Watching it, I found that Albarn put me in mind of no-one more strongly than Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, particularly when the story focused on how Albarn had assembled a new instrument out of all the truck bus, car and scooter horns manufactured in Shanghai. Morrison said that wasn’t the first time the thought had surfaced, but really great to see new waves of talent pushing the musical envelope. SustainAbility will be helping Julie’s Bicycle, with both Geoff Lye and I involved initially.

Thursday, July 05, 2007

IBLF AND SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS

Among the dark suits

Maggie (Brenneke) and I made our way late today to Kew Gardens, glorious even in light rain, where I chaired a ‘fish bowl’ session in front of 80 leaders from business, government and NGOs. Session part of an annual meeting for IBLF, the International Business Leaders Forum (http://www.iblf.org/media_room/general.jsp?id=123940), an organisation that does sterling work across the sustainable development agenda. Had the challenging task of helping six social entrepreneurs to tell their stories, more or less in sound-bites, and then three people from business to respond, all in 55 minutes.

The social entrepreneurs were Nancy Biberman, Co-founder and President of the Women’s Housing and Economic Development Corporation, based in the Bronx, the poorest urban county in the US; John Houghton, CEO of TEDCOR, which focuses on solid waste collection in South Africa; Martin Kalungu-Banda, Founder and Executive Director of The Partnership Forum, Zambia; Manoj Kumar, CEO of the Naandi Foundation in India, who apparently runs the largest kitchen in the world; Zablon Karingi Muthaka, owner of Beta Bins Waste Management, Kenya; and Rafal Serafifn, Director of the Polish Environmental Partnership Foundation.

Then we had responses from Sonjoy Chatterjee, Managing Director and CEO at ICICI Bank UK; Mark Foster, Group Chief Executive, Accenture; and Edwin Fuller, President and Managing Director, Marriott International. Frustrating in that each of the entrepreneurs could have spoken for at least an hour – interestingly and usefully – about their stories, but at least we managed to provide a taster for those around us in the Orangery. Again interesting to see how the social entrepreneur’s stories sparkled when compared with more conventional CSR narratives.

Robert Davies looks reflective

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

RAINSTORM AT CITY HALL

Spent this afternoon and this evening speaking at an event organised by Ipsos MORI at City Hall to celebrate a new survey on public attitudes to climate change – if celebrate is the right word. 81% of Britons interviewed felt that climate change would have no effect on them. More positively, those that recognised that it is happening said they were willing to act, as long as the process was fair. One odd statistic: sales of clothes pegs at Asda have jumped 1400%. Wonderful thunder storm as we convened ahead of the conference in London’s Living Room, atop City Hall. Could almost have been organised to dramatise the risks. Torrential downpour at one stage. Missed it by minutes, having comfortable time to wander around the guitars display outside.

Monday, July 02, 2007

CLIMATE IN A BATHTUB

One of the highlights of the Tallberg plenary sessions was Peter Senge’s run-through of the Climate Change Simulator, based on balancing flows of water into and out of a bathtub. Eureka! To try it out, go to http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/watch/climate_change/challenge.htm

Sunday, July 01, 2007

TALLBERG FORUM ABOMINATION

The spiralling gliders and biofuel-powered monoplane were impressive in the endless Scandinavian twilight as the ‘Heaven and Earth’ concert marked the end of the 2007 Tallberg Forum. Most of the music was indifferent, but Lake Siljan provided a staggeringly beautiful backdrop as children raced around after bubbles blown by all and sundry. But then – as half a dozen hot-air balloons strained at their tethers – WWF performed an abomination. Hundreds of people released plastic WWF-branded pink balloons which swarmed into the skies. Then, to add insult to injury, thousands more balloons were released from great nets. Really, what planet are these people on?

Bubbles

Balloons: hot-air and abominable

Saturday, June 30, 2007

DINOSAURS ON WHEELS

Surprisingly, given the climate change focus of many of the Tallberg Forum sessions, we were surprised – and weirdly delighted – to see a seemingly endless parade of vintage gas-guzzlers, mainly American, passing through the village. Many of the drivers were heavily tattoed. Didn’t seem quite Swedish.

Friday, June 29, 2007

HOW ON EARTH CAN WE LIVE TOGETHER?

Elaine and I arrived at Arlanda airport on Wednesday, 27 June, expecting to find a bus. People who had been to the Tallberg Forum before saw no evidence of a reception committee or of a bus, so we raced across to catch a train – and rode two hours standing up in the corridor of a speeding train with hordes of young people headed towards the Swedish version of Glastonbury. Met a bunch of semi-familiar faces on the next train, to Tallberg itself, and arrived in wonderful evening sunshine. Borne away to hotel Akerblats by biofuel-powered Saab, then later walked down to the shore of Lake Siljan before collapsing into bed. Nice chat on the jetty with young man who had been swimming in the lake with his large black dog. Evening wonderfully fragrant of hay meadows and mock orange. Everything wildly picturesque.

The big themes this year were climate change and sustainability. I was mainly involved in Track 1, where the question was: As the present path is not sustainable, what is? Sessions were subject to Chatham House Rule and no cameras injunction. Among those I was in harness with: Tariq Banuri of SEI, Nayan Chanda of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, James Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Ruud Lubbers of the Netherlands Energy Research Centre, Jonathon Porritt of Forum for the Future, Peter Senge of the Society for Organizational Learning and Achim Steiner of UNEP. The process was so jam-packed that I ended up doing a very brief introductory session with Tariq and Alan AtKisson, and then handing over to the participants to ponder the question: What is sustainability? The session took off like a rocket.

For some reason, I felt frustrated and displaced through many of the sessions. Overall, a sense that there was more interest in talking about the issues than there was in hunkering down and thinking about solutions. Davos may have its faults, but it’s better organised and is enormously energised by the presence of large numbers of social and environmental entrepreneurs. Worth having gone, but the most interesting conversations flowed from accidental, serendipitous encounters walking to and fro from sessions – or, right at the end, when escaping from an overblown session in the Big Tent and chatting with a number of fellow refuseniks. Couldn’t help thinking that the Tallberg Forum is uncomfortably caught between its origins (since 1981) as a small, select and convivial gathering and its rapidly growing size and ambitions in recent years.

One of the most striking features of the event, for me, was the block of ice brought in from Greenland, and allowed to stand in the sun as the Forum proceeded. As it melted away, my sense of frustration grew. Then, weirdly, probably as a reaction, a thought train on some of the things I want to do over the next 2-3 years began to crystallise. More anon.

Sunday, June 24, 2007

WETLANDS WITH REED WARBLER

Had a wonderful walk with Hein and Elaine, in fitful rain, around the Barnes Wetlands Centre. Hein hugely moved to see a reed warbler in the reed-beds, something he has only heard before. We also saw the most amazing duck, with powder-blue beak and seemingly stitched together from different birds. Frogs croaking in the drizzle, including some we could see at fairly close quarters: brilliant green and quite rapt with each other, ignoring us entirely. Meadowsweet out in great froths and masses of orchids, too. Several herons and a stunning tern, airborne sculpture.

Hein and Elaine

Me

Us

Reflections

From a hide

Saturday, June 23, 2007

FIFTY-EIGHTED

Began my 58th birthday by opening a surprisingly large number of cards, including a wonderful one from the SustainAbility team, assuring me – with the aid of a white-coated scientist and graph on the font of the card – that research shows that birthdays are good for you, because we are now discovering that the more birthdays you have, the longer you live.

But one of the nicest images I have been sent in recent days came from my father, Tim, who sent this photograph of my mother, Pat, taken by my sister Caroline. It catches her essence, at least to my mind. She says that it is unduly flattering and reflects the fact that she was looking at Tim …

In the evening, Hein Sas – an old Dutch friend and colleague – arrived, as did Gaia and Hania, Doug and Margot Miller, and Ian and Tina Bruce, and we had a quite wonderful evening. One highlight: Hein brought me the most thunderous silver bicycle bell from Amsterdam, which I think would probably register on the Richter scale.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

CRASH

Had meant to work on the final version of the book at home today, but crashed into bed – mixture of effects of long-term travel, the Brazilian virus and, I’m told, generally doing too much. Could have slept for a week, easily.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

IMPACT EVENT IN WINDERMERE

Spent the past couple of days on the edge of Lake Windermere, kicking off a very interesting conference held by Impact (http://www.impact-dtg.com/) on sustainable enterprise. Arrived very late on the Tuesday evening, in time to see rabbits scurrying around the country hotel’s lawns. Then the heavens opened, with great crashes of thunder and flashes of lightning. A mixture of Beatrix Potter and Bram Stoker. Fascinated to listen to (Lord) Michael Hastings, who did the session after mine. Explored the social and political dimensions of all of this is a very moving way. And bumped into Ray Anderson and his wife, of Interface, in the grounds, which was fun. He spoke at the same event. Still wrestling with the virus, though, and travelling by train is a bit of a nightmare – not just for me.

Monday, June 18, 2007

TOMORROW’S GLOBAL COMPANY LAUNCH

Spoke at the launch of the Tomorrow’s Global Company Inquiry report today, held at Reuters in Canary Wharf. For more details, see http://www.tomorrowscompany.com/global/news.aspx#newsitem19. My Brazilian virus was at work, though, and I had to chew throat pastilles constantly to keep from choking. Probably looked like a Chicago gangster.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

 
Across early to Editora Globo, the media group, with Cynthia Rosenburg (http://www.empresaverde.globolog.com.br/) – who Jodie (Thorpe) and I work with on our regular column for the new Brazilian business magazine Epoca Negocios (http://epocanegocios.globo.com/). Took part in a panel discussion, followed by photographic session for an interview for the magazine, then wonderful lunch some way away with Cynthia, Editorial Director Nelson Blecher and Ivan Martins, Executive Editor.

Then back to Hotel Transamerica with Cynthia, to do interview, after which I am called down from my room for photography session with long-haired Japanese photographer for a piece that is due to go in Revista Inevestimentos, then work on editing one of the chapters for our book (The Power of Unreasonable People), then into a taxi for dinner with Jodie at an excellent restaurant at the Casa da Fazenda do Morumbi. Wonderful old building, great food, then a walk under the stars among the jaboticaba, mangrove, avocado, magnolia and rosewood trees. The home of the Brazilian Academy of Art, Culture and History, the building houses some of the worst paintings I have seen in my entire life.

Illegal photo taken in lobby of Editora Globo building

Rupert

Ivan Martins and Cynthia Rosenburg

Blinkered

Mall roof on way out

Cats at the Casa da Fazenda do Morumbi

Gate in the gardens

Grill

Thursday, June 14, 2007

FUNBIO

Jodie and I were sped across Sao Paulo this morning to a conference at the British Centre organised by Funbio (http://www.funbio.org.br/publique/web/cgi/cgilua.exe/sys/start.htm?tpl=home&UserActiveTemplate=funbio_english), where I appeared as part of a panel of speakers for three hours or so – in front over 100 people from business, government, NGOs and the media. Funbio (the Brazilian Biodiversity Fund) is a non-profit organisation which received a $20 million grant from the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) some years back. I spoke about our experience with stakeholder engagement, both internally and during processes organised for clients. One of the questions we were asked by one of the discussants turned out to be a concealed question about Alcoa’s recent mishaps in relation to stakeholder processes in Amazonia, though I didn’t realise that till later. After lunch, we spent a couple of hours with Pedro Leitao, Funbio’s Secretary General, and his team, discussing how they might evolve in future. Partly sparked by the work SustainAbility did some years back in preparing the report The 21st Century NGO (http://www.sustainability.com/insight/research-article.asp?id=51).

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

HELICOPTERING AROUND SAO PAULO

Fascinating meeting of the International Advisory Board of Institute Ethos in Sao Paulo, Brazil (http://www.ethos.org.br/DesktopDefault.aspx?Alias=Ethos&Lang=pt-BR), yesterday and today. Then, this afternoon, Joao Gilberto Azevedo Santos of Ethos and I were helicoptered across to the HQ of Banco Bradesco for meetings with the Presidents and senior executives. Welcomed off the roof by Jean Philippe Leroy, who runs the market relations department, which combines investor relations with corporate social responsibility. One thing he told me during the visit: the bank offsets all its helicoptering via tree planting. Hmmm. But was impressed with the way the top brass handled my questions, from the work of their foundation and the climate impacts of air-conditioning, through efforts to control money laundering and invasions of privacy, to the number of people affected by bank robberies each year. One slightly odd observation: have only heard one distant siren of a police car here, in what is meant to be quite a violent city, whereas in London it’s every five minutes at times.

Then three of us were helicoptered back to the Hotel Transamerica for the opening of the Ethos annual conference, where Jodie (Thorpe) gave an excellent presentation on our new report, Raising Our Game, and I took part in the subsequent panel discussion chaired by Aron Cramer of BSR and featuring such folk as Ernst Lichteringen of GRI, Alice Tepper Marlin of Social Accountability International, Ricardo Young of Ethos and Simon Zadek of AccountAbility. One nice, seredipitous touch: Jodie noted that today, the 12th, is the Brazilian equivalent of St Valentine’s Day, which keyed in nicely with our favoured ‘Hearts’ scenario in the report.

Ricardo Young in full flow

NEW BUSINESS & HUMAN RIGHTS WEBSITE

One of my favourite social entrepreneurs is Chris Avery, the man responsible for developing the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre and related website, initially inside Amnesty International UK, and then as a spun-out, independent entity. Declaring a very real interest, I sit on the Centre’s Board of Trustees – and congratulate the team on their revamped website, which has been launched today at http://www.business-humanrights.org/Home

The new design makes it easier to:

· Search for a company and check its human rights record – with over 3600 companies covered

· Stay up-to-date with ‘News’ and ‘Feature of the week’ on the homepage

· Check how companies are responding to concerns raised about their conduct

· Explore the archive of news & reports on over 160 sectors; 180 countries; 160 issues

· Access ‘Special resources’, including all materials by UN Special Representative John Ruggie

· Sign up for free Weekly Updates.

Monday, June 11, 2007

20 YEARS ON FROM BRUNDTLAND

Given that 2007 is the twentieth anniversary of the Brundtland Commission report, Our Common Future, which helped put the concept of sustainable development on the international agenda, it is hardly surprising that SustainAbility has found itself involved in a growing number of events and projects designed to look back, assess progress and then look forward. One of these has been our Raising Our Game project, whose report is now downloadable from our website (http://www.sustainability.com/raising%2Dour%2Dgame/). Separately, a two-part SocialFunds.com article on the theme can be found at http://www.socialfunds.com/news/article.cgi/2308.html

Sunday, June 10, 2007

THE ROAD

I picked it up in the Shaman Drum bookshop in Ann Arbor recently, because I had heard such good things about it. Then I picked it up again as I left home yesterday for the airport – and read it on the flight to Brazil. And I can’t rememember when a book hit me as hard as The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. One that did, which I read back in the late 1960s, was Earth Abides by George R. Stewart. The theme of both books is post-apocalytpic, but McCarthy’s book reads like the very best poetry. Unputdownable. It’s one of the most powerful love stories I have come across, in this case between man and son.

If it is often easier to explain unsustainability than sustainability, this is a treatise in the bleakest unsustainability. A personal journey through the civilizational disintegrations painted on a bigger canvas by Jared Diamond in his book Collapse. And yet the final paragraph of The Road, which in a way twists the knife, is one of the most beautiful distillations of sustainability I have come across – reminding me of afternoons alongside streams like the Windrush in Gloucestershire and rivers like the Stour in Dorset.

Friday, June 08, 2007

SURREAL

Elaine

Elaine and I went to the ‘Surreal Things’ exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum today. Had fun with the distorting mirrors, but the thing that stuck in my mind was the wheelbarrow cushioned in pink satin by Oscar Rodriguez. Was it a wheelbarrow or a richly upholstered couch? And that put me in mind of the article in the latest issue of Harvard Business Review by Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto – who I know via his membership of the Skoll Foundation board. His forthcoming book, The Opposable Mind, argues that – like the human opposable thumb – the mind of a great leader can hold opposing ideas in tension at the same time, seeking a better synthesis. That’s a skill we need at SustainAbility, for example, as we try to balance the imperatives of growth with those of influence.

Then we head across to see the new Whole Foods store in the old Barkers building in High Street Kensington, a block from where SustainAbility had an office before we moved to Hyde Park Corner and then on to Holborn. The Whole Foods Market approach is quite impressive (American version of quite) – see http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com//UK/pressroom/pr_06-06-07.html.

Egghead

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

DIRECTOR COLUMNS

Some of the columns I have written for Director magazine can be found at http://www.director.co.uk/INDEXES/Comments/John_Elkington.html.

Monday, June 04, 2007

UN GLOBAL 500

One of the highlights of the last twenty years was when Julia Hailes and I were elected to the UN Global 500 Roll of Honour, in 1989. Received a note today to say that it is celebrating its twentieth anniversary, like SustainAbility. More at http://www.global500.org/

Friday, June 01, 2007

LOW CARBON JUDGEMENT DAY

Spent much of the day chairing the judging panel for the CARS NOT CARBON competition for advertising and marketing campaigns designed to promote ‘greener motoring.’ Organised by the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership (http:/www.lowcvp.org.uk). My camera battery died part-way through, because I failed to charge it last night after the launch of our Raising Our Game report, which truncated my visual record. Still, Simon Baines of Satellite Marketing took a bunch of photos, so may post some of those when they come throught.

The judges came from such organisations as BP, DEFRA, Ford, The Guardian, Leo Burnett, McCann Erickson, Toyota and Transport 2000. The categories included: Smarter Driving; Low Carbon Fuels; Responsible Vehicle Use; Responsible Low Carbon Business Transport; Low Carbon Passenger Cars; and Low Carbon Vans. We judged as our barge cruised around the Grand Union Canal. T he results will be announced at a conference at the DTI Conference Centre on 28 June.

STICKING YOUR FINGER IN A POWER PLUG

Well, delightfully, I get top billing in the latest issue of Skoll eNews (http://www.skollfoundation.org/newsletter/053107.htm). An exerpt:

Long before “corporate responsibility” was considered de rigueur, SustainAbility was telling corporations they needed to consider the economic, social and environmental impacts of their products. In fact, John Elkington, founder and chief entrepreneur of SustainAbility coined the term “triple bottom line” back in 1994.

Today, as the London-based consulting firm celebrates its 20th anniversary, it has moved to a powerful new agenda. Working with the Skoll Foundation, it is probing the ways that social entrepreneurs reframe seemingly impossible challenges such as health care and climate change as opportunities, shaking up entrenched systems and offering innovative new models. The report that SustainAbility released at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship in March 2007, “Growing Oppportunity: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Insoluble Problems,” is the first in a series of annual surveys, papers and workshops about social entrepreneurship funded with a $1 million, three-year field-building grant from Skoll.

The partnership seeks to accelerate the development of the field of social entrepreneurship by building bridges between social enterprises, businesses and financial markets. It will explore and address the challenges social entrepreneurs face, identify best practices and help build awareness of social entrepreneurship among business and financial communities, where connections can help advance the work of social entrepreneurs.

“People want to see creative, innovative, scalable solutions to problems. That’s why we are delighted to be involved with social entrepreneurs,” explains Elkington. Interacting with these energetic individuals is, he says, “like sticking your finger in a power plug.”

To subscribe to the newsletter, go to www.skollfoundation.org and enter your address in the Skoll eNews box at the bottom of the page.

Thursday, May 31, 2007

RAISING OUR GAME

Back late from the launch of SustainAbility’s latest report, Raising Our Game: Can We Sustain Globalization? (http://www.sustainability.com/raising-our-game/), at an event co-hosted by Anglo-American at their HQ in Carlton House Terrace. I introduced the report and Sophia (Tickell) chaired the discussion panel that followed, which featured folk like Doug Miller of GlobeScan and Charles Secrett, previously head of Friends of the Earth and now an advisor to London Mayor Ken Livingstone.

Gave special thanks to Ritu Khanna for keeping the project on the tracks – and to Mark Lee, our CEO, for keeping the orgnaisation on its own tracks during the somewhat protracted process. But I’m really pleased with the end result. There was an extraordinary buzz at the reception that followed. These are three pictures that Sam (Lakha) took as she circled Chris Marsden, Jonathon Porritt and I. Our latest recruit, Ori Chandler, who it was announced only today was joining the team, took photos throughout the session, so may post some of those, too, later.

Chris, Jonathon, me

Me, Chris, Jonathon, Mark (Lee)

RAISING OUR GAME

Our second report as part of our Skoll Program was launched in London today. It is now posted on our website (http://www.sustainability.com/raising%2Dour%2Dgame/). Raising Our Game: Can We Sustain Globalization? looks out to 2027 to examine future scenarios for sustainable development, and proposes a new set of rules which could help business rise to the unprecedented challenges ahead. The report looks at the trade-offs involved in future choices over environmental and social value, and at the role to be played by innovation, entrepreneurship and the emerging economies of the South. There will be winners and losers, but no more business as usual. For more information or to register your seat at one of our launch events, please contact Ritu Khanna at raisingourgame@sustainability.com

Friday, May 25, 2007

BUSINESS & HUMAN RIGHTS RESOURCE CENTRE

Spent much of the day with the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre in Charlotte Street. Their website, which is a treasure trove of material on business and human rights – as the label on the tin might suggest, is in the process of being revamped. The new version, which launches shortly, will be a major step forward.

Then back to the office for a call to Brazil, ahead of my trip there next month, followed by a meeting with Henry Saint-Bris of Suez. Also get to leaf through a print copy of our twentieth anniversary report, Raising Our Game: Can We Sustain Globalisation?, which has just arrived from the printers. Much of the weekend will be spent doing slides for the launch on 31 May, hosted by Anglo-American.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

CHELSEA PHYSIC GARDENS

Glorious, fascinating day at the Chelsea Physic Gardens, for a session of the Avdisory Board of Physic Ventures (http://www.physicventures.com/) – during which I did a joint presentation with Sophia (Tickell). The weather was wonderful, although there were moments in the morning when it felt as if we were in Kuala Lumpur. Then in the evening, across to Cafe Fish, near Piccadilly Circus, for dinner with Elaine, Jed Emerson and Jason and Kippy Scott, he of Generation Investment Management.

Monday, May 21, 2007

LOW CARBON, HIGH ADRENALINE

Slightly scrambled day, part of which involved being stranded in a Piccadilly Line train outside Hammersmith for an unconscionable time en route to a meeting on biofuels at Clarence House, chaired by Prince Charles. Got there just as the group was convening – and more or less got over my “low carbon, high adrenaline” experience by the time I was called on to speak. Then back to the office to be filmed for a BBC World series on, of all things, Formula 1 racing. Then out to dinner with Elaine, Will Rosenzweig and his wife Carla. Slightly tired by the time we got home.

Sunday, May 20, 2007

THE SPITTING IMAGE

A couple of days ago, Geoff Lye, Sophia Tickell and I had an interesting lunch with John Gummer and the Quality of Life Challenge team. Geoff has prepared a statement on the need for the UK to become ‘carbon positive,’ which is now posted on the SustainAbility website (http://www.sustainability.com/insight/article_open.asp?id=953) and on the Quality of Life Challenge website (http://www.qualityoflifechallenge.com/). As we convened upstairs, waiting to head downstairs to lunch, I couldn’t resist taking a picture of John’s ‘Spitting Image’ dummy in its glass case …

Thursday, May 17, 2007

SOCIAL EDGE DEBATE

I’m facilitating a debate on social entrepreneurship on Social Edge this week. If you’re interested in taking a peek – or, even better, inputting – here’s the link:

http://www.socialedge.org/discussions/social-entrepreneurship/survey-of-social-and-environmental-entrepreneurs

Thursday, May 10, 2007

A BOARD’S-EYE VIEW

Ready for inhalation of the vapours

Flew in to JFK late last night and was up early today in New York’s Marriott Financial Center to take part in the CRO Conference, sub-titled ‘A Board’s-Eye View of Corporate Responsibility.’ In this case CRO stands for Chief Responsibility Officer, with the event organised by CRO magazine (http://www.thecro.com/). Was part of an early panel session on where the whole agenda is headed, alongside the CERES Director of Governance Programs, Anne Kelly, and two companies: Interface and Neenah Paper. The photograph shows the bank of chairs we were asked to sit on. They reminded me of the tripod that the Oracle of Delphi used to sit on while inhaling the vapours – methane, ethane and ethylene predominantly, as I have been reading in a fascinating book on the subject as I flew around the country. This is The Oracle: Ancient Delphi and the Science Behind Its Lost Secrets, by William J. Broad (Penguin, 2006).

The Oracle of Delphi at work

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

IDEO

Last night, Maggie and I had dinner with Bob Adams of designers IDEO (http://www.ideo.com) at a fantastic Greek cuisine restaurant in Emerson Street, Kokkari (http://www/kokkari.com). Then this morning we made our way across to IDEO at Pier 28 on the Embarcadero, for a session with members of their San Francisco team. We are plotting a possible joint project. Wonderfully bright bunch of people – and an environment that reminds me strongly of the world we worked in when SustainAbility first moved out of our house in Barnes and slotted in alongside Brand New Product Development in Holland Park. Then out to the airport for flight to NYC.

IDEO 1

IDEO 2

IDEO 3

IDEO 4

IDEO 5

IDEO 6: Maggie and Bob

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

SKOLL AND THE FUTURE OF GREEN

After our meeting with Mitch Kapor, Maggie and I are forced to take a town car out to Palo Alto to get to the Skoll Foundation in time. The shame, the guilt, the footprint! And, to make matters worse, we are supplied in the luxurious back seat with elegant bottles of Norwegian mineral water. Sally (Osberg), the Foundation’s President, beats me up on that pretty much the moment we arrive. But then we then have two wonderful sessions, one with Sally and her immediate team, then a wider one, over lunch, with most of her colleagues. A great opportunity to report back on our work so far as part of our ongoing 3-year program with the Foundation. As we travel across the States, Maggie and I are liberally dispensing copies of our first Skoll report, Growing Opportunity: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Insoluble Problems (http://www.sustainability.com/insight/skoll_article.asp?id=937).

The WEF session itself was held out at HP’s HQ, where we were kindly driven by Laura Vais of the Skoll Foundation. The event, which I facilitated, was off-the-record, but one of the thing that always impresses me about their workshops like this is the instant charting done by their artists. One of the charts for my session appears below.

Our waves hit the big time, again

MITCH, WANDA & US

Day started with a magical session with Mitch Kapor (http://www.kapor.com/: see, too, my February 24 blog). What a startlingly rich city San Francisco is in terms of its human capital and diversity. Maggie and I made our way across to Mitch’s extraordinary building, where dogs were everywhere in evidence, from the moment we were ushered in to the moment we left. In his own office, we also met Wanda, who gave the entire proceedings a slightly surreal, Starwarsish effect.

Talking about the sustainability agenda, and my impending session on ‘The Future of Green’ with the World Economic Forum out at HP, Mitch noted that it is “a done deal,” “game over,” and that the last place any self-respecting company wants to be is “on the trailing edge.” We also talk about his wife Freada’s new book, Giving Notice: Why the Best and Brightest are Leaving the Workplace and How You Can Help Them Stay, which explores why bright young people are leaving the business mainstream (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/002-9400800-1657641?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Giving+Notice). If there were more people like Mitch, the tide would become a tsunami. I’d join – just for the shirts.

Warm welcome for Maggie

Dog

Dogs

How’d a porcupine get in?

Color-coded: Mitch and Wanda

Monday, May 07, 2007

PHYSIC VENTURES

After an early, fascinating visit with Nan Stone of Bridgespan (http://www.bridgespangroup.org/), Maggie and I make our way across to see Will Rosenzweig and his team at Physic Ventures, particularly Phil Giesler, Director of Innovation at Unilever Corporate Ventures – and now deeply engaged in Physic. This is a venture capital firm that “works closely with entrepreneurial teams and invests in technology-enabled, consumer-driven businesses in North America, primarily early to mid-stage.” Key areas are health, wellbeing and sustainable lifestyles. I’m on their strategic advisory board (http://www.physicventures.com/leadership.html). It’s their first day in their new offices on California Street. Sense that things are on a roll.

Then an interview with Cheryl Dahl, who I first came across through Fast Company, and who is now working on a fascinating web-based venture aimed at green consumers – particularly people who don’t really consider themselves as such. In the evening, Will and his wife Carla take Maggie and I to a wonderful Basque restaurant along Battery Street, Piperade (http://www.piperade.com). Really had no idea that Basque food – and particularly Basque wine – could be so good. I could live here.

A shape that imprinted itself on my brain when I first came to Frisco in the early 1970s

HURRAH, I’M 2,589,000TH …!

While in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a couple of days ago, I met Keith Schneider of the Michigan Land Use Institute. We were talking about websites and blogs with Jonathan Halperin, from SustainAbility’s Washington, D.C. office, when Keith asked how many people visited my personal website. I said I had never asked – and, to a degree, didn’t want to know. But after further discussion he offered to take a look at the site’s performance according to Technorati, which rates sites by number of links rather than visitors.

His feedback TODAY is that this site ranked “778,427 out of 71 million blogs tracked by Technorati.com, the best blog search engine.” Then he took a look at this site and SustainAbility’s via www.Alexa.com. In the interests of transparency, he reported that “Your personal site is ranked 2,589,000. And sustainability.com is ranked 559,024.” He went on to say that “SustainAbility.com is doing very well,” whereas I am beginning to oscillate between a wish that I hadn’t shown an interest and, on the other hand, a mildly competitive need to boost my numbers!

Sunday, May 06, 2007

CALIFORNIAN MEALS AND WHEELS

First full day in San Francisco started with breakfast with Maggie (Brenneke), following which I took the BART train out to San Bruno and a truly weird yellow cab (at least as far as the driver was concerned, but at least with Duke Ellington playing on his fading in-and-out radio) onward to San Mateo for lunch with Debra Dunn, ex-HP and now a member of SustainAbility’s Faculty. Then mainline train back to the city and fairly soon afterwards, with Maggie, across to see Denise Caruso of the Hybrid Vigor Institute (http://hybridvigor.org/), also a member of our Faculty. She recently published an extraordinary book on risk, Intervention: Confronting the Real Risks of Genetic Engineering and Life on a Biotech Planet (hvpress, 2006).

After dinner at a Thai restaurant, Denise drove us back into the city in her open-topped car, with The Beatles booming out Come Together as we crested the rise from her home – and gazed out over that astounding cityscape of lights. The stars were amazingly clear, as was Venus, I think. Given that I have described her part of the city as very much like an aircraft carrier, giving you the sense that you are about to take off over the city and Bay, and that aircraft carriers are sometimes called flattops, it was slightly spooky that the line playing as we crested the ridge was “Here come ol’ flattop, he come groovin’ up slowly” (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Come_Together).

San Mateo station

Denise’s stairwell

Saturday, May 05, 2007

LETTER OF SUPPORT FOR JOHN BROWNE

Signed a letter of support for Lord Browne of BP while in the US. It appeared today in the Financial Times (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/7a2ddd32-faa7-11db-8bd0-000b5df10621.html) and The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,,2072999,00.html).

WHAT DO NGOS WANT?

In to San Francisco, after a couple of days in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with Jonathan Halperin of our D.C. team. We took part in a conference at Michigan University’s Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise (http://www.erb.umich.edu/) on the theme of ‘What Do NGOs Want?’ Professor Tom Lyon, the Institute’s Director, is developing a book on the theme. Our report The 21st Century NGO will make up one chapter. Groups like Environmental Defense, Greenpeace, the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) and WWF who took part quipped that they felt like “lab rats” or “beetles on a pin,” but the event turned into a very interesting exercise. Great to see old friends like (Professor) Tom Gladwin and Marty Zimmerman, who was a key figure at Ford when SustainAbility first started working with the company.

Magical moment when Erb Institute Associate Director Andy Hoffman asks me how we calculated the height and variation of the waves of societal pressure since 1960 that I have been tracking at SustainAbility since 1994. The answer is that the process has often been a bit like that scene from Close Encounters of the Third Kind when Richard Dreyfuss frantically models Devil’s Tower out of mud. I have grabbed at any data and stray information I could get my hands on. But then Andy opened several pages from his thoroughly studious book From Heresy to Dogma: An Institutional History of Corporate Environmentalism (Stanford Business Books, 2001), and a winner of the Rachel Carson Prize. The trends and the patterns were remarkably similar, even though these maps were data-driven and mine have been somewhat more intuitive.

At one point, Jonathan and I strolled around the town and stumbled across a wonderful shop, The Shaman Drum Bookstore. Couldn’t help myself, as usual. Came away with books like William Broad’s book The Oracle, Gary Snyder’s Back on Fire, Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains (which Jane Nelson has been encouraging me to read for ages), A Billion Bootstraps: Microcredit, Barefoot Banking, and the Business Solution for Ending Poverty by Phil Smith and Eric Thurman, and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Just as well we’re driving a truck …

Jonathan asked for a hybrid – and instead we got …

I’m vertically challenged

Marty Zimmerman (centre) asserts, while Dow Chemical and BP reflect

Jonathan does social service

Thursday, May 03, 2007

BEDFORD ROW TREES

Don’t know what species they are, but the trees in Bedford Row make this my favourite time of year there. The fragrance from their blossoms is heady – though it competes at the moment with the smell of solvents and hot, drilled materials in the London office, where a bunch of new desks and cupboards are being installed at the moment, together with what look like several entry ramps to the fabled information superhighway.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

BOBBY “BORIS’ PICKETT

Associated Press: Johan Huibers’ Ark

SustainAbility’s London offices are being rewired and redesked this week, so have been working mainly at home, though with regular excursions into central London for meetings – today with James Cameron, Monica Araya and Tanja Havemann of Climate Change Capital in Grosvenor Street. Have also been working on the book and the final stages of our globalization study, the latter due out on 31 May. Plus preparing slide presentations for Ann Arbor and San Francisco later in the week.

And climate is the unlikely link to the obituary this week (Independent, 28 April) of Bobby ‘Boris’ Pickett. One of my least favourite tracks on my least favourite Beach Boys album, which I nonetheless bought while at school in 1964, was ‘Monster Mash’ on Beach Boys Concert. But once heard, the words – by Pickett – were difficult to flush out of one’s mind:

I was working in the lab late one night,
When my eyes beheld an eerie sight,
For my monster from his slab began to rise,
And suddenly to my surprise …
He did the mash,
He did the monster mash,
The monster mash,
It was a graveyard smash.

And the link? Well, in 2004 Pickett took his song, originally released in 1962 and which he also later morphed into such forgettable songs as ‘Transylvania Twist’ and ‘The Werewolf Watusi’, and updated it to produce ‘Climate Mash’, designed to help turn up the heat under the Bush Administration.

Any the picture at the top of this entry? It’s an AP image of the half-size Ark built by Johan Huibers in The Netherlands (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6604879.stm). If you can’t win the politics on climate, and you can’t sell enough humorous records to buy yourself a hilltop retreat, the next big thing is to built a monster version of an upended Airstream trailer/caravan and take to the waves.

Saturday, April 28, 2007

HANIA MAKES ME WANT TO PAINT

Hania Elkington 2007

Hania arrived for the weekend just before lunchtime, drawing me away from my computers. She took us through her photographs of her time in Istanbul this past week, and left me wanting to take up painting.

Hania Elkington 2007

Friday, April 27, 2007

PHOTOGRAPHS

Spent much of this week finishing off SustainAbility’s new report on the future of globalization – and the implications for the future of corporate responsibility and sustainable development. One of the more convoluted studies we have undertaken, long overdue, but I think coming together very powerfully now.

Then home by taxi, because I had to transport back the three huge photograph albums I compiled over the years of the first ten years or so of SustainAbility’s history, which Sam and Kim have been using to scan in photographs for the twentieth anniversary section of the website (http://www.sustainability.com/twenty/). A sample can be found at http://www.sustainability.com/twenty/gallery.asp.

As the taxi unloaded me in Barnes, Julia (Hailes) was just arriving for dinner and to stay the night, ahead of doing a speech on green funerals tomorrow. She brought a copy of her new book, The New Green Consumer Guide (http://www.juliahailes.com/Flyer-NGCG-jun06.pdf). After supper, we all sit through till late going through the albums, recalling old adventures and filling in some of the missing names against age-old photographs. Had somehow missed the mention of her in the Financial Times, despite reading the paper semi-religiously every day, on 30 March (http://search.ft.com/iab?queryText=Julia%20Hailes&y=7&aje=true&x=8&id=070330000595&location=http%3A%2F%2Fsearch.ft.com%2FftArticle%3FqueryText%3DJulia+Hailes%26y%3D7%26aje%3Dtrue%26x%3D8%26id%3D070330000595&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fsearch.ft.com%2Fsearch%3FqueryText%3DJulia+Hailes). The item was on her recent work for McDonald’s (http://johnelkington.com/time-wave2.htm), a company we had a major run-in with after the publication of the orginal Green Consumer Guide.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

ALWAYS WANTED TO PLAY THE ALBERT HALL

Rory Stear of Freeplay Energy noted – as we all waited to go on stage there today – that he had always wanted to play the Albert Hall. Other panellists for the debate on what it takes to be a ‘Good Director’ were Penny Newman of cafedirect and Philippa Foster Back of the Institute of Business Ethics. The transcript can be found at http://www.iod.com/intershoproot/eCS/Store/en/pdfs/ac07_transcript_panel.pdf.

I continue to contribute a column to Director magazine, the latest of which can be found at http://www.director.co.uk/MAGAZINE/2006/12%20Dec/elkington_60_5.html.

The IoD also launched a new climate change microsite on its website today: http://www.iod.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/en/-/GBP/IODContentManager-Start;sid=xQsRsteuGQgLbZGdp3AbJH9uV3tiFITovqY=?ChannelID=2&MenuID=20&TemplateName=policy%2fcontent%2ftransport%2fpol_transport_climate_change%2eisml.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

DOUGHTY CENTRE FOR CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY

Across to Pall Mall for a small dinner hosted by Nigel Doughty, co-founder of Doughty & Hanson Co., the private equity firm. Tube proved to be having some sort of conniption, so I walked there from Holborn, remarkably quickly. Spotlight of the evening was on David Grayson, recently appointed as the Director of the newly established Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility. This has been possible by a £3 million commitment by Nigel to fully fund the Centre for the next five years and to set up a Trust Fund to provide funding for subsequent years.

Friday, April 20, 2007

THE CRETAN TSUNAMIS

Thera today (source: Landsat)

Weird, given that Elaine dreamed of a tsunami on our first night in Aghios Nikolaos last week, during a rainstorm, that this evening we stumble across the BBC Timewatch programme ‘The Wave That Destroyed Atlantis,’ exploring possible links between the Thera/Santorini eruption and the extinction of the Minoan civilization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thera_eruption). Although we were told in Crete that the ultimate collapse of the civilization came some time after the eruption, the evidence of widespread tsunamis triggered by the collapse of the Theran caldera and vast inrushing of seawater atop the incandescently hot magma seemed fairly persuasive, with the coast-based Minoans likely to have been overwhelmed. And the archaeological evidence of the cannibalization of young people during the post-tsunami period added a new wrinkle to the Minotaur myth.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

LAKKI MEMORIAL AND AFTER

As Georgios drives us back down the serpentine road towards the coast, Elaine asks me to catch a shot of a sign to Hania (a coincidence in naming, since Hania’s name came from the world of the Hopi Indians) as we roar around yet another a hairpin bend. I ask Roland if we can stop off for a moment to see the memorial to Cretan resistance in the mountain village of Lakki. It works out – and the sculpture is impressive. A reminder of just how hard-won the island’s independence has been. Later we stop for wonderful Cretan yoghurt and honey by a river, before having a final wander around Iraklion/Heraklion, where we encounter evidence that at least some aspects of the bull cult still flourish.

Despite early concerns about the difficulty of achieving a hat-trick with Syria, Cyprus and now Crete, ACE have pulled it off once again. As a result, if the Fates allow, we hope to head back to this extraordinary island under our own steam. But a parallel challenge will be to work out what the fourth ACE in our hand might be, though if we allow the current tempo to continue that wouldn’t be until 2009.

Lakki memorial

The general direction of Hania

The cult of the bull continues

Monday, April 16, 2007

SAMARIA GORGE

As we prospect for wildflowers on the Omalos Plateau, old tyres are everwhere, often strewn in circles like mushroom rings. When I go across to one circle, their use becomes obvious from a solitary colony: they are stands for mobile beehives. Sadly, the Samaria Groge is closed until next month, so six of us content ourselves by climbing up to its westernmost end, with fairly hard going at some points – though our oldest member, she’s over 80, is pretty much like a mountain goat. As we go higher, a cuckoo – or cuckoos – call back and forth far below.

After we get onto the top of the mountain, and within sight of the Gorge’s end, Elaine and I unhook and scramble up to sit in the bowl of a giant, gnarled cypress tree, where the droppings suggest that various forms of wildlife seem to watch life go by when humans aren’t about. We watch vultures circle overhead and engage in roiling mobbings with ravens and choughs. A perfect ending to an extraordinary visit – though the true end comes tomorrow, with the trip back to Iraklion/Heraklion.

Tyrehenge

One reason why the bees are here

Tools, ancient and modern: shepherd’s crook, branch for a new one, and Toyota truck

Goats create a weird topiary

The climb begins

Clearly, goats aren’t the only natural forces these trees must contend with

An easy patch

Sunday, April 15, 2007

SELINARI GORGE AND RETHYMNON

On our way west, we stop off at the Selinari Gorge, to watch griffon vultures and other birds soaring in the building thermals. Didn’t much like the monastery, or what we saw of it, which felt jerry-built, but maybe it’ll settle in by 2100? Then on to Rethymno/Rethymnon, where Elaine and I hoofed it over the the Venetian fortress that dominates the harbour. Circumnavigated at speed, but well worth the effort. Then on to watch birds at Agia Lake, where the orange trees were in glorious blosson, the fragrance heady – and the orange juice served in the nearby cafe my idea of the sort of libation I would expect in the Elysian Fields. Still kicking myself, though, because I failed to get to the bottom of the frog-croaking sound from within a rubbish bag by the lake.

As we drove west, my mind was on the plight of the Allied troops faced with the German paratroop invasion in 1941. Another woeful tale, at least in part, of British incompetence in the early stages of the war. Had meant to bring Anthony Beevor’s excellent book Crete: The Battle and the Resistance (Penguin, 1992), but couldn’t find it at home before we left. Will read it when I get back. But as we begin the long drive up the winding route to the Omalos Plateau, where our visit will end, many of us are acutely aware of the grim plight of the Allied troops who struggled over the same route after the German invasion, of the heroism of the Cretans who both helped them and fought fiercely to prevent the para-landings, and of the terrible reprisals exacted in the aftermath of the battle and later.

Not at Selinari, but had to get it in

Kevin with an eye on higher things, vultures mainly

Snaking hose

Rethimno/Rethimnion harbour

Vista from fortress

All along the watchtower

Given the Cretan love of cement, this could be a modern shrine with votive instruments

KNOSSOS COLOSSUS

Spent this morning at Knossos, starting with a moment of reflection in the shadow of that great man, a colossus of archaeology, Sir Arthur Evans. Though much criticised by future generations of archaeologists, his was an extraordinary genius. Scooting ahead of the group, I had much of the site to myself for periods and its scale was palpable. During the so-called Second Palace Period (1700-1350 BC), the palace covered 22,000 square metres and had over 1500 rooms. It’s not hard to see where the Greek notion of the labyrinth came from, nor – when you hear of the tribute levied on the expansive Minoan colonies – where the myth of an all-consuming Minotaur might have come from.

I was greatly struck by the abstract beauty of the bull horn sculptures, by the relief frescoes and by the melting alabaster blocks that one encounters all over the site. People may not like the Evans affection for concrete reconstructions, but they presumably have served to protect some of the site from the elements.

As we have travelled, I have been reading the latest episode in the Dune series, Hunters of Dune, by Frank Herbert’s son Brian and Kevin Anderson (Hodder & Stoughton, 2006). Herbert was also a genius, of a different sort to Evans, but one whose mind was also able to roam over centures and millennia in a quite extraordinary way. After years of trying to track him down, I finally met him and his wife Beverly either in 1981 or 1983, ironically just as he was heading back to Seattle from London and I was just returning to London from Seattle. My original essay based on the session can be found at http://johnelkington.com/inf-people-herbert.htm. Although qualitatively different, Hunters turns out to be an excellent read – and worthy successor. Indeed, I can’t wait to read the concluding volume in the series.

Knossos Colossus

Welcoming blooms

North entrance

And again

Nest

My reflection, leaning on a wall

If only stones could speak

Even monumental alabaster melts over time

The Royal Road

Saturday, April 14, 2007

CHOUGHED AT MONASTIRAKI GORGE

Across to visit the gorge mouth that we can see from our hotel on the other side of the Gulf or Mirabelle. As promised, a colony of choughs to aerobatics for us along the way. Then I drag Elaine off down the gorge and up along a levada, or irrigation canal, leading to a set of ruined watermills on the other side. Fascinating design, with the wheel turned by the water below the wheels that ground the grain. When I tried to find a way back across the gorge lower down, it proved fruitless and we had to double back – though, mercifully, a small group of stragglers were still poring over flowers part-way back, so our tracks were covered.

Mouth of Monastiraki Gorge

Chapel 1

Chapel 2

Choughs

Part of one of the watermills

GOURNIA AND ENVIRONS

Pleasure heaped on pleasure. Any concerns we may have had about scoring a hat-trick with ACE study tours have long-since been banished. This morning we visited Gournia, the best-preserved of all Minoan towns. It enjoyed a massive strategic advantage, controlling the narrow isthmus which enabled traders and others to send goods overland to the south rather than relying on the much more dangerous sail around the eastern cape. The site was discovered by an American, Harriet Boyd-Hawes, who started digging in 1901. A wonderful site, and fascinating to see how the coastline has shifted since, a process you can see continuing as you watch. Here I found myself chewing on juniper berries – various others followed my lead, but I’m not sure they were quite as impressed, with at least one saying she preferred to get her juniper infusions via gin.

After a walk along the coast, plant-spotting, we had a glorious lunch in Pakia Ammos, with Elaine, Kevin, Roland and I eating in the open, under a bright blue sky. Several of the party went swimming before lunch, though the wind was quite cold and the waves seemed full of plastic sacks and other assorted detritus. Retsina, small pastry packages of spinach and cheese, calamare, octopus, sardines, and other seafood delights. Heaven.

Wild gladiolus at site entrance

Gournia wildflowers

The journey commences

Kevin instructs

Roland is a man of the book

Nests of the processionary caterpillar

Nest in my juniper snackery

Yesterday’s rain is adding to the sedimentary fan

Vista in blue

Prostrate plants speak to wind’s power

Spiny centaury again?

Pakia Ammos

THE PALACE OF MALIA

Spent the morning at the excavated Palace of Malia, first discovered by Joseph Hatzidakis in the early twentieth century – and a site showing evidence of extensive earthquake damage at various points in its history. Two extraordinary finds we only saw in the form of photographs were the famous gold pendant showing two bees and the extraordinary leopard’s-head axe, both of which are in the Museum of Iraklion/Heraklion – currently under refurbishment, and therefore inaccessible.

After the visit, I found myself snacking on the shoots of an Aleppo pine near the museum, which were delicious. Then we walked along the coast, in my case alongside the crashing waves. One of the plants I was most struck by here was spiny centaury, whose structure of thorns reminded me of Tim Smit’s biomes at The Eden Project. But when I looked up the name via Google, the images that appeared looked nothing like the plant we had seen. Any suggestions?

As we were leaving, a beautiful purple heron came winging by from the nearby marshes – a wonderful sight. But my overall reaction to the coast here was one of profound sadness: the amount of rubbish and litter dumped everywhere defies the imagination. And, sadly too, I very much doubt much of what we saw as we walked the coastline will ever be of much interest or use to future archaeologists. But some entrepreneurial rival to ACE might think of doing a spotting tour of mineral water bottles, beer cans, condoms and the like. When we got back to the hotel in the early afternoon, I crashed – sleeping for three hours solid.

Even with tyres scattered around the landscape, this was something different – but what?

The colour of clay

Malia plants 1

Malia plants 2

Malia coastline

Spiny centaury?

Windswept Elaine

Friday, April 13, 2007

ZEUS AND THE LASSITHI PLATEAU

Friday 13th. Inland to the Lassithi Plateau, past some of the surviving traditional windmills on the lip of the plateau. Then a walk through farmland, past rubbish tips and with a distant view of what may be an abattoir with a ram’s head affixed to its central window. We are looking for birds – and find them a-plenty. Some people also see frogs in the river, though my eyes are on the snow-covered peaks in the distance. Then off to the Dhiktean Cave in which Zeus is reputed to have been born. Climbing up towards the cave affords wonderful panoramas of the landscape. A wren sings at the mouth to the cave and three Griffon vultures do a glorious fly-past.

Windmills 1

Windmills 2

On one side of the path …

… and on the other …

Another sometime scourge

Mouth of the Dhiktean Cave

Cave 2

Cave 3

Cave 3 – and isn’t that Zeus in the middle?

Coins at the bottom of the Cave

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

VENETIAN LION AND LEPERS

By boat later this afternoon to the long-impregnable Venetian island fortress of Spinalonga, which was only handed over to the Turks some 50 years after they had taken over the rest of Crete. More recently, for the first 50 years of the twentieth century, the island was a leper colony, Europe’s last. Lepers were sent there even when drugs had become available that would have made such suffering and incarceration needless. But it was hard to recall those dark days when walking around in the sun, admiring everything from Roman nettles to the colour of the waters surrounding the fortress’s walls. Reminded us of the Venetian castles we prowled around in Greece in 1970, with their extraordinary cisterns. Later, we headed back by boat to Plaka for an excellent fish supper, ending with raki.

Spinalonga looks innocent today

Feeling tyred, presumably after a second life buffering boats

In range

Door 1

Door 2

Flowers

Turret

‘Prow’

Carved graffito on a prickly pear leaf

Kevin and Roland

And there’s the lion various people had been looking for

Elaine 1

Elaine 2

Nets in Plaka

Corner of Plaka fish restaurant where we sat above the harbour

FARMING THE WIND

After lunch, we went up onto the mountains above Elounda, looking back over Spinalonga. Spying a vulture circling over a distant windfarm, I took off among the olive groves and made for the ‘Temple of Vestas’ – a Danish windpower company I have long admired.

There had been a degree of disagreement in the group when we had first espied the machines, with a fair amount of distaste expressed by some, whereas I find well-designed aerogenerators things of great beauty. Indeed, spent a fair amount of time during the early 1980s trekking around windfarms worldwide while writing Sun Traps for Penguin. Elaine finally tracked me down among the white giants and we walked back along the ridge to rejoin the group, who were poring over every wildflower encountered along the way – or springing back to loft their binoculars and watch some bird passing overhead.

Spinalonga from above 1

Spinalonga from above 2

Goatsbeard – like a huge dandelion head

An even larger dandelion head

Courtesy of Vestas

Windfarm 1

Windfarm 2

End of a cable drum

Grove 1

Grove 2

SALT PANS AND SUNKEN CITY

A morning spent in and around Elounda, particularly the former Venetian saltpans – which apparently attract waders, though there are few about today. On our way to Elounda, we stop off on a high point and take in our surroundings, for me the high point here being a huge carpenter bee. Once down by the saltpans, we pass by a number of disused windmills and the waters under which lie the ruins of the sunken city of Olous, on our way out to the Spinalonga peninsula. I amuse myself by eating a fair amount of salty samphire, which is genuinely delicious.

Everything here is under construction

She doesn’t look as though she’s going willingly …

View across the saltpans

Windmill

Elaine shows the way

Underneath the lampost

Windmill 2

Windmill 3

Blues

AGHIOS NIKOLAOS

Arrived yesterday afternoon in Heraklion, en route to Aghios Nikolaos and the Hotel Miramare – the beginning of a week-long study tour on ‘Crete: Birds, Flowers and Minoans.’ Organised by ACE Study Tours (http://www.acestudytours.co.uk), with whom we have previously travelled to Syria and Northern Cyprus. Those trips were so spectacular that I confess we are somewhat uneasy that Lady Luck is unlikely to strike three times in a row. But early conversations with the tour leaders – Kevin Hand and Roland Randall – suggest that our chances are way better than even.

It had rained last night and the steps of the hotel this morning were squiriming with long black millipedes, so the wildlife element of the trip has already begun … and, as usual, I’m finding it hard to shake off the BlackBerry habit, though try to indulge surreptitiously.

Vista from our balcony

Graffito

Nearby cemetery

Sunday, April 08, 2007

KITES

Gaia, Haia and John (Jencks) just passed through to collect the car and head west, to Little Rissington. As we drove through the Chilterns last weekend, to the same end, the sky was busy with red kites, a glorious sight. And they seem to be spreading west from their site of reintroduction.

Then, last night, I picked up a copy of the 1986-1995 Indypendium, a celebration of 20 years of journalism in The Independent, and stumbled across Richard Mabey’s ‘The Kite Flies Again,’ the last piece in the collection. He notes that the red kite was once a common bird across the whole of Britain, but was exterminated by the English landed gentry and their gamekeepers. In the early 15th century the bird made such a contribution to public health in London by virtue of its scavenging that it was a capital offence to kill one.

Later still, I stumbled on a TV programme on Douglas Bader’s downing in 1941, his ‘kite’ at the time being a Spitfire. Programme dragged at times, as the archaeological team dug up one aircraft wreck after another, but the final conclusion was that Bader had been the victim of ‘friendly fire,’ rather than colliding with an Me 109, which put a different spin on things (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Bader). Watching the excavations was significantly more interesting in the light of the stream of items that the archaeological team that dug up my father’s Huricane sent us over the years. Extraordinary, too, to see how many planes came down in such a small area of France.

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

THREE AMBULANCES

Back late this afternoon from Little Rissington, after a couple of wonderful days with my parents at Hill House. On current trends, the ambulances will soon be finding their way there with their eyes closed. In the past three months, several ambulances have come to collect or return family casualties. First, my youngest sister had some sort of stroke when Elaine and I were in Davos, which brought an ambulance to her London home; then my painterly sister collided with her easel and damaged her leg very severely indeed, necessitating another ambulance, this time to Hill House; and now, a few days back, my mother effectively died in the kitchen – and had to be brought back to life by my youngest sister, now fully recovered and, mercifully, originally a hospital sister. Another ambulance.

The three of them joke that they are competing for attention – and even tries to tie my collision with last year’s Mongolian woman (see 23 August, 2006 entry) into the general pattern of mayhem, but I’m beginning to think that cycling in London is safe by comparison with living the rural idyll. On ambulances, I have no complaints, but the Little Rissington casualties, while full of praise for the crews, say Gloucestershire ambulances have a ride akin to Sherman tanks.

Saturday, March 31, 2007

BULLRUSHES

The plantings of bullrushes and reeds around Barnes Pond are beginning to get into their stride – the sun was setting behind one clump as we walked back from a trip into central London today, largely to pick up the laptop I stupidly forgot to bring back after last night’s celebration. As we sat alone in the office and I did a message to the team, it brought home how much of SustainAbility’s undoubted achievements of the past 20 years have depended on other people. Then, this evening, having bought DVDs of the latest Bond film Casino Royale and of The Queen, we watched the former. Wonderfully distracting, doubly welcome since the peer reviews have just come in for the new book – but I think I’ll leave that until Monday. Have always expected this next stage to be complicated.

Friday, March 30, 2007

SUSTAINABILITY IS 20

Today we marked SustainAbility’s twentieth anniversary, kicking off a process of celebrating the organisation’s twenty-first year and pushing forward our ongoing transformation. A special 20-years-on section of the SustainAbility website will be launched next week.

In this first event, which coincided with a Board meeting today, we mainly invited the UK team and alumni from over the years – including Fiona Byrne, our first-ever employee. Sadly, co-founder Julia Hailes couldn’t make it, but will be involved in later stages. The US team also couldn’t make it, though their latest recruit – Jonathan Halperin – was with us. We used his presence to celebrate the extraordinary success of our US colleagues since that defining early setback, when we were based in New York, of our team watching the planes fly into the World Trade Center. Also from the US, Debra Dunn, a member of the Skoll Foundation Board, joined us – having spent much of the week at the Skoll World Forum in Oxford (see earlier postings).

A deeply moving gathering of the tribes, with every face telling a story. I recall, for example, when Geoff Lye joined us in the early 1990s and he and I couldn’t pay ourselves for several months – something he helped us put right by getting the organisation onto a much sounder financial footing. He now splits his time between us and the Oxford-based Environmental Change Institute, where he focuses on climate change. And among those present was Jonathan Shopley, now CEO of the CarbonNeutral Company, but a colleague on the consultancy side of my life when we were launching SustainAbility. He jokingly complained that when people Google his name today, a blog entry of mine comes up No. 1, describing how Gaia amd Hania embraced him on our doorstep after his long ride north from South Africa. Can’t see what he’s complaining about: when I Googled him, the blog came up No. 4 …

More seriously, our continuing friendships and relationships with such people underscore one of the more delightful aspects of SustainAbility. Unlike an oceanic wave, which maintains its form in passing but leaves individual water molecules that once formed it behind in its wake – our organisation may have involved 80-90 people in its Core Team over the years, but those who have moved on have tended to stay as part of our extended family, in some cases as members of our Council, which ran for ten years, and now our Faculty.

Gaia and Hania brought me a ‘birthday’ card, celebrating 20 years of their third “sister,” SustainAbility, which shared our family home for several years before it flew the nest. Now it is more or less grown up and over the next few years will increasingly be in the business of establishing nests elsewhere in the world, including – we hope – India. Twenty years on from the launch of the Brundtland Report, which began the process of mainstreaming the concept of sustainable development, the idea of intergenerational equity has gained a fair amount of traction – and, in my mind at least, that was symbolised by the presence of Norah Lee, daughter of our CEO Mark Lee, who pops up in a couple of the photos below. My thanks to Tell Muenzing, who took many of them.

Thursday, March 29, 2007

SKOLL WORLD FORUM 2007

Bumped into Geoff (Lye) at Oxford Station, while waiting for a train back to London. Railways, as usual, in turmoil, with our train cancelled because of missing guard. But nothing could drown out the astonishing experience of the past few days at the Skoll World Forum.

From the music of Salman Ahmad and the gentle wisdom of Charles Handy through to the thoughts of David Galenson on the different forms of creativity and Larry Brilliant (of Google.org) on reasons for optimism, this was an unbelievably rich banquet of ideas and – in line with this year’s theme of ‘Innovators in Action’ – there was a regular jolt of electricity from social and environmental entrepreneurs from, by Jeff Skoll’s count, 40 countries on six continents.

We launched our first Skoll Report, Growing Opportunity: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Insoluble Problems, co-sponsored by Allianz and DuPont (http://www.sustainability.com/news-media/news-resource.asp?id=938). And the four of us (Sophia, Maggie, Ritu and I) were involved in three separate sessions.

One, ‘Partnering with Business,’ ran on Wednesday, was chaired by Sophia, and featured Maggie, social entrepreneurs Blaise Judja-Sato (VillageReach) and Chris Elias (PATH), and leading speakers from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, GE Asset Management and GSK.

The second, chaired by Jan Piercy of Shorebank, focused on the challenge of accessing capital for social enterprise, and I was on the panel alongside folk like Penny Newman of Cafe Direct, Michele Giddens of Bridges Community Ventures, Tim Reith of Community Innovation UK and Arthur Wood of Ashoka.

And the third, as the event moved towards its conclusion, came earlier today. I chaired a discussion with Bill Drayton of Ashoka and Ed Miliband, Minister for the Third Sector, with whom a number of us had dinner last night at the Said Business School. First time I’d met him, but was impressed by his grasp of the subject and the clarity of his delivery. Still, Larry Brilliant was a tough act to follow, particularly with his astonishing swooping in and out of the Indian sub-continent via Google Earth, or similar, in the process of demonstrating how horrendous the risk of climate change is to low-lying countries like Bangladesh.

To view the Forum sessions online, go to http://www.skollfoundation.org/skollcentre/skoll_forum.asp

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

THOMAS CRANMER REMEMBERED

In the olden days, Oxford saw the burning of people whose thinking was outside the bounds of orthodoxy. Last night Geoff Mulgan noted that the Skoll World Forum was being held just around the corner from where Archbishop Thomas Cranmer was burned in 1556 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Cranmer). Passed the spot today.

RISING TO THE TYPO CHALLENGE

The Guardian devotes a full page today to my piece on ‘Rising to the Challenge’ (http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2044046,00.html) – and you have to admire their consistency in ensuring that their random typo generator is always switched on. Somehow they managed to convert the acronym for the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers into KPBM, twice. I take my hate off to them.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

ONE PLANET BUSINESS, SLAVERY AND SKOLL WORLD FORUM

Began the day with WWF at Westminster Central Hall, helping launch the new One Planet Business report that SustainAbility has developed with WWF and a range of other partners (http://www.sustainability.com/insight/research-article.asp?id=941), including the Global Footprint Network – one of the winners in this year’s Skoll Awards (see below). Clive Anderson moderated and made a particularly pointed comment about Sky TV being both carbon-neutral and tax-neutral, an issue that SustainAbility has been covering in its work on the tax agenda for business (http://www.sustainability.com/insight/research-article.asp?id=450).

As I left, I passed a demonstration calling for reparations for the slavery era – and, in Parliament Square, the brooding statue of Lincoln. Then by train to Oxford, where I snapped the always moving statue of the WWI Tommy reading mail from home, to take part in the Skoll World Forum (http://www.skollfoundation.org/skollcentre/skoll_forum.asp). The opening ceremeony was held in the Sheldonian Theatre, an exquisite building – but its seating also provides exquisite torture for the lower anatomy.

Staying at The Randolph Hotel, which a troubled friend signed into some 30 years ago planning to burn the place down. They guessed: he signed in as Lucifer. My brother had to go and bail him out.

Fuzzily from the Sheldonian Gods: Sally Osberg, Peter Gabriel, Muhammad Yunus and Jeff Skoll

Monday, March 26, 2007

CHATHAM HOUSE AND HARRY POTTER

Spoke at a rather dreary Chatham House conference, ‘Sense & Sustainability,’ before heading down to Oxford for a Skoll Foundation dinner to celebrate the 2007 crop of social entrepreneurs. Held in the dining hall of Exeter College, where – Jeff Skoll said – Tolkien came up with the basic idea for Lord of the Rings and, more recently, sundry parts of Harry Potter were filmed.

Barry Coleman (Riders for Health) and Susan Burns (Global Footprint Network), Exeter College

Sunday, March 25, 2007

DIVERSION EN ROUTE HOME

Have never come across more roadworks than on our trip to Fowey and back, taking the ‘fast’ route via Bristol westward, then coming back on the A30 and A303, and dropping off to see Julia Hailes and her family for lunch. The Google Earth time estimates turned out to be pretty much spot on, though, despite some quite extraordinary diversions, which probably means I wasn’t driving at the most fuel-efficient speed. Still while they may have blurred by, I relished the burial mounds and tumuli around Stonehenge as we headed east.

Saturday, March 24, 2007

A PERFECT DAY WITH TIM SMIT

Having driven down to Fowey from London last night, Elaine and I headed across to the Eden Project (http://www.edenproject.com) for 11.00 this morning, to meet up with Tim Smit – and he gave us the Grand Tour. Some images below. Wonderful to see where ‘Seed,’ by Peter Randall-Page (http://www.peterrandall-page.com/) will stand from June. We talked on after a late lunch and then Tim, the epitome of hospitality, led us across to the Lost Gardens of Heligan, which we managed to get around before the sun went down. Just. One of the most extraordinary days of my life, with the skies blue horizon-to-horizon from the moment the sun came up to the moment it disappeared. As the three of us took stock back at the Hotel Marina, over a bottle of Framingham Pinot Noir, I couldn’t get Lou Reed’s voice out of my mind.

Waterboatman

Dome from dome: Tim and Pamela talk geodesics

Fishbones?

Heavenly glass

Heavenly roof

Enough said

X marks the spot where Peter Randall-Page’s ‘Seed’ will stand

Testing the acoustic

WEEE Man

Saurian scales

A different drum

Cassanova and the Marquis de Sade

What are they hatching?

Tim’s steed

Eden flowerpots

Heligan flowerpots

Not quite up to his eyeballs

Brassica seem unafrighted

Cooler: Pamela (wearing rug from our car) and Elaine

Exits

Sun begins to set

But it still lights up the trees when we get back to Fowey

And then the lights come on

Monday, March 19, 2007

INVASION OF THE FROGS

Gaia and Hania were over yesterday and, after we talked about the frogs that have taken over Gaia’s garden in North London, she emailed me some photographs she had taken. Some of the amphibians are unlike anything I have seen in this country before, except – perhaps – for one orange fog I saw in a welter of the beasts on a Cumbrian moor behind Eskdale Green maybe 30 years ago. Maybe I haven’t been looking in the right places. But maybe encouraging when frogs seem to be in such precipitous decline in so many places.

Who’s the alien?

Saturday, March 17, 2007

JACK, THE DEBATE IS OVER

I had thought it progress when Jack and Suzy Welch had concluded that it was time for business to act on climate change even if the science wasn’t yet proven, in their ‘The Welch Way’ column in the February 26 issue of BusinessWeek. Given how much Welch has resisted this whole agenda, this seemed like the dikes beginning to break. But the March 19 issue now carries a very prominent letter from an Ian Keay in Palo Alto, arguing that “Jack, the debate is over, and the scientists have won …. There is no more time for fence-sitting.” I only know one Ian Keay in Palo Alto: he was our Best Man in 1973.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

WEAK SIGNALS, LSD AND KPMG

Stopped off briefly in St Bride’s Church, off Fleet Street (http://www.stbrides.com/), as I walked across to a meeting of the Tomorrow’s Global Company Inquiry Team this afternoon. A place of worship for 2000 years, the site is a wonderful island of calm. The extraordinary Wren church has been the “the spiritual home of printing & the media” for 500 years. According to the Church’s website, something that would have seemed a miracle even a few decades ago, the church stood empty for seventeen years, after “a wartime bomb had left the church a smouldering shell.” An extraordinary sense, despite the ecxesses of today’s media, that this has been an axial point around which successive battles have been fought for freedom of speech.

Then on to KPMG’s HQ, just around the corner, for the meeting. At the dinner afterwards we were considering the key skills and attributes of tomorrow’s CEO and other business leaders. I scribbled down four in my little blue Moleskine notebook before the tour de table began, and when it was my turn to speak – after around 15 contributions – none of mine had been mentioned.

One was a Superman-like ability to see way back down complex supply chains, a form of X-ray vision. Another was the capacity to pick up early on weak signals of new risks and opportunities. The problem here, I noted, was that if you become too sensitive to weak signals it’s a bit like being on LSD, where everything seems significant. Someone I had earlier challenged on his Neanderthal positioning on climate change fired back that it seemed as if I had taken LSD – to which I replied that, as usual, I knew of what I spake. Laughter followed, but the point stands: and it’s a rare mind that can do this.

A third item on my shortlist was a sense of humour, which often signals an ability to play with ideas and see things from odd angles. Not as powerful as LSD, perhaps, but in the longer term likely to leave more of the brain intact.

Maybe it’s the Sixties, and all that went with them, but in these various conversations around the future of globalisation – including SustainAbility’s own 20th anniversary report on the theme, which I am working on at the moment – there is too often a comfortable, dangerous assumption that the processes of globalisation will run on rails. That seventeen year hiatus at St Bride’s should be a reminder that History rarely runs on rails, and neither will current forms of globalisation.

GREEN ALLIANCE BROWN

The news hoardings were full of Gordon Brown’s greening as I headed across to the Café Royal last night for the Green Alliance (http://www.green-alliance.org.uk/) event showcasing the Chancellor. Apparently he was invited last year, but the invitation was turned down. Then when David Cameron was invited instead, the Treasury called to demand why Brown hadn’t been invited? Hey-ho, but here we go, it seems: climate change and carbon budgeting have become the stuff of the political steeplechase.

I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised by Brown, though can’t say I trust his instincts after his action in areas like pensions and the ill-fated Operating & Financial Review (OFR). He noted that when he commissioned Sir Nicholas Stern’s report on the economics of climate change, he had no idea about the scale of the challenge the world faces. His ideas for upgrading the United Nations Environment programme, for greening the World Bank and for ensuring that future Chancellors of the Exchequer have to count – and account for – carbon were welcome. Indeed carbon budgeting (and the implications for the Treasury) is an area where Geoff Lye – who now straddles SustainAbility and Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute (http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/) – has been investing a great deal of effort in recently.

Brown also reported that he is going to ensure that all homes eventually have energy efficiency ratings, like white goods such as fridges, which is welcome, and he is writing to the European Commission to ask that member states be allowed to reduce or remove the VAT on green products. All good stuff, as far as it goes, but I thought his prediction that climate change would radically transform global governance over the next 5 years a little far-fetched, though much stranger things have happened.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

FROG SPAWN

Glorious walk in Richmond Park today, with jackdaws, rooks and parakeets in joyous Spring-time mood. Had a sudden hunch that the frogs would be spawning and we walked over to the Secret Pond, to find several clumps of spawn already afloat. Uneasy feeling that they may be too early.

Friday, March 09, 2007

ONE PLANET BUSINESS INTERVIEW

Did a filmed interview today for the launch of the WWF One Planet Business report and programme later this month – a project which SustainAbility has been helping with. As we filmed, Sam (Lakha) flitted around with the diminutive Canon camera and these are some of the results.

Venetian blind and three echoing glasses

A touch of green

Eye off the ball

Q&A

Q side of the equation

Almost done, Sam?

The killer question

(All photos: Sam Lakha)

SUSTAINABILITY JOINS USCAP

Jeffrey Immelt (Chairman and C.E.O., General Electric) and Jonathan
Lash (President, World Resources Institute) at the launch of the USCAP
Call to Action [Photo credit: Reggie Lipscomb, NPS Photography]

SustainAbility has signed up as a supporter of the US Climate Action Partnership. The USCAP (http://www.us-cap.org) is a group of businesses and leading environmental organizations that have come together to call on the Federal government to quickly enact strong national legislation to require significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. USCAP has issued a landmark set of principles and recommendations to underscore the urgent need for a policy framework on climate change.

The statement we provided to USCAP along with our endorsement reads as follows: “As SustainAbility enters its 21st year working with businesses to address society’s greatest challenges, we are encouraged by the leadership and courage demonstrated by the members of the USCAP. We share their sense of urgency regarding the global need to dramatically and rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and we join them in their call for national climate change legislation in the US.”

The six principles that are core to the USCAP Call for Action (http://www.us-cap.org/ClimateReport.pdf) are:

(1) Account for the global dimensions of climate change;
(2) Create incentives for technology innovation;
(3) Be environmentally effective;
(4) Create economic opportunity and advantage;
(5) Be fair to sectors disproportionately impacted; and
(6) Reward early action.

THE ROBERT DAVIES BLOG

Someone I have known for many a year, Robert Davies (CEO of the International Business Leaders Forum, http://www.iblf.org/), has started a blog which affords a very different – and very interesting – window on the linked fields of corporate responsibility and sustainable development.

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

IMPERIAL PINK – AND BLUE

Always enjoy doing sessions with the Business & Environment MSc students at Imperial College, the course run by Andrew Blaza, which I did again this morning. Highly diverse and engaged group. Back to a bunch of writing tasks, but particularly the report we are racing to finish in time for the Skoll World Forum at the end of the month. One theme of my Imperial session was the need for more creativity in this space – and this week, so far, we have had visits from creative folk like Bob Adams of IDEO (http://www.ideo.com/) and a number of his UK colleagues, from Kris Murrin of ?What If! (http://www.whatifinnovation.com/), and from Sara Olsen of SVT Consulting (http://svtconsulting.com/about/team.html).

Imperial blue

Imperial pink

Sunday, March 04, 2007

THE MASON PEARSON HAIRBRUSH

In between blogging and doing catch-up work for the office, I have been wading through piles of The Times, Financial Times, and other assorted newspapers that have accumulated at home while I was away, including today The Observer and The Sunday Times. Yesterday’s FT included a nice column from Carolyn Lyons on the Mason Pearson hairbrush, “the brush that really brushes.” Its design roots go back to 1885, apparently.

All I know is that it was always the standard brush in my family – and Elaine’s – and still is. But the story that sticks in my mind is my mother’s, who used to use these redoubtable brushes to tan our hides when we were small. At one point, the handle of a brush broke off. So she sent it back to Mason Pearson, with a polite note saying that she had used their brushes to beat her children for many a year. Not sure that would square with human rights rules these days, but, obligingly, they sent her a new one.

BAPU KUTI

One of the wonderful things about the Bangalore visit was the generosity of spirit of the people who I met around the city. Rohini Nilekani, for example, not only introduced me to the work of Arghyam (http://www.arghyam.org; motto: ‘safe, sustainable water for all’), but put me in touch with Rajni Bakshi, who is deeply knowledgable about the deep history of civil society movements in India, particularly those based on the thinking of Mahatma Gandhi. Though Rajni lives in Mumbai, she and I had two long telephone conversations while I was in Bangalore and then, as I was packing to leave, the door bell went – and Rohini had sent over a copy of Rajni’s book Bapu Kuti: Journeys in Rediscovery of Gandhi, published by Penguin Books, India, in 1998 (http://www.amazon.com/Bapu-Kuti-Rajni-Bakshi/dp/0140278389).

Read most of the book on the flight back, aided by the fact that it was delayed by a couple of hours, and was soon scribbling reams of notes. A wonderful, threaded series of twelve stories of activists who have taken forward Gandhi’s thinking – all linking back to Bapu Kuti, the simple, elegant ‘mud hut’ originally designed by and built for Madeleine Slade, or ‘Miraben’, an extraordinary aristocratic Briton who had sailed to India in 1925, aged 33, and adopted Gandhi as her spiritual father. After a major attack of malaria, he lived in what became known as Bapu Kuti for many years and it subsequently became a shrine.

Among the things that struck me about the stories Rajni tells are the impact of the thinking and work of Joseph Cornellius Kumarappa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._C._Kumarappa), whose “economics of permanence” anticipated sustainable development by several decades, and the unbelievable courage of people like the founders of Ganga Mukti Andolan (GMA), which fought to reclaim the Ganges from those pillaging it.

Got a comforting look from an air hostess when she passed and saw my eyes brimming with tears as I read the words of Shanti Devi, a 55-year-old widow who had been active in the GMA since its beginning: “We will fight, no matter what happens. If I die fighting then like a daughter I will go to sleep in the lap of Mother Ganga.” What made the words even more powerful was the knowledge that the GMA insisted on non-violence, while their often extremely violent opponents resorted to techniques like slashing those who resisted their power and then immersing them in the river, to bleed to death.

Saturday, March 03, 2007

BANGALORE TRAFFIC

Bangalore’s traffic seems to run on just two principles: first, drive as fast as you can, as close to the vehicle in front as possible, with no thought for lane discipline; and, second, put your hand hard on your horn at every possible opportunity. You get used to it surprisngly quickly, though I wouldn’t want to try it on a cycle – except if I was shielded on either side, like one cyclist I saw today, by what looked like milk churns. Some of the tuk-tuks were laying down smoke-screens worthy of WWI destroyers – though I only managed to snap one that was fuming in a relatively modest way.

Friday, March 02, 2007

DRAGONFLY SPIES

During a working session alongside the swimming pool on the future of tracking, monitoring and sensing, I noted that it would be useful to have a robotic dragonfly to flit acrosss to a nearby working group – and see what they were doing. (Would have been useful, since they were the ones who won the subsequent future business competition.) The idea had surfaced after we had been passing around a set of RFID and other tracking devices. Then, weirdly, a giant dragonfly came and hovered over our group as it was disassembling. I tried to photograph it – and it almost seemed to know what I was trying to do, and played with me. Then it got a little too clever, trying a different flight-path – and, click, it was in frame.

The agenda

Tracking technologies

Fly past

Got you

Thursday, March 01, 2007

ABSTRACTIONS

Apparently, the discussions in Bangalore are proving to be more abstract, more strategic than those in the earlier session in Egham, Surrey. Not surprised, given how abstract some of my traffic pictures turned out.