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Before the proceedings start

Members of the Dialog CSR team

Advertised

Sign at entrance to Nuga Gama

Banyan tree in the dark

Banyan at close quarters

Screened as we go in on day 2

British Council Director Keith Davies interviewed

Flew to Sri Lanka via Maldives, arriving yesterday afternoon – and was picked up at the airport by Michael de Soyza of Dialog Axiata. Finished reading Charles Cumming‘s brilliant spy novel, The Trinity Six, on the last leg.

Thence to the Cinammon Lakeside hotel to shower and brush up, before I met the company’s CEO, Hans Wijayasuriya, following which we made our way across to the conference venue for the first of two events, this one for an audience of invited CEOs.

The panel discussion that followed included Dr Hans and Dr Rohan Fernando, chairman of the Sri Lankan UN Global Compact network. Dialog have active programs around social enterprise and base of the pyramid markets.

Afterwards, some 20 us had a wonderful dinner at Nuga Gama, under a towering banyan tree, with traditional music and dancing. Amazing how much cooler it was under the banyan than it was in the wider city. At one point, a member of the restaurant team demonstrated the system of bells that runs through the tree, to disturb the bats that might otherwise rain droppings on the diners beneath.

Then back to the hotel, where I had to work late on some outstanding things for Volans.

Today there was a repeat performance for CSR and sustainability practitioners and members of the public. My warm thanks to the British Council, once again, for its support for such aspects of our international work. An even livelier discussion today than yesterday.

Then out to the airport with Michael for the flight to Singapore. Flying Emirates, I found their vegetarian meal in Economy significantly better than BA’s equivalent in Business class. BA makes you feel that you are doing penance for following a vegetarian diet, whereas the Emirates equivalent feels almost celebratory. Time for BA to pull up its vegetarian socks?

As for Sri Lanka, this was my first trip – but it already felt like home.

On the train towards Verbier

Ditto

W Hotel in Verbier

Desktop art

Wall art

Up the mountain

Chateau de Chillon at speed from train

Spent Friday and Saturday en route to, at and on way back from Verbier, Switzerland, keynoting the launch of the Verbier Institute.

Other speakers included Julia Groves of the Trillion Fund, Aleyn Smith-Gillespie of the Carbon Trust, André Schneider of the EPFL and the Danish artist Per Arnoldi.

Kudos to the Verbier Institute team: Anders Sjostedt, Robert Howe and Michael Mathres.

Some fascinating conversations along the way, during and after, especially with André. Among the things we discussed: the EPFL Blue Brain Project and the Venice Time Machine. Plus a bunch of other things.

Had read about them both before, but it’s amazing what interesting work is going on in some parts of Europe. Turned out that André is a Dr Who fan, too.

Had a quick-fire trip (with my case) up the mountains afterwards, with perhaps 10 minutes at the top before taking a cabine down to Verbier and then down into the valley, to catch the first of two trains back to Geneva. Gave a useful perspective on it all.

Fingers crossed that the Institute takes off.

Bottled

Juggled

Went with Sam to see Andy Wales and Andre Fourie of SABMiller, to discuss the company’s Prosper initiative. Came away quite (American sense) impressed.

Then, as we were walking back to Hyde Park Corner, saw the sculpture of the juggled elegant – and, risking life and limb, made our way across Park Lane to inspect from closer quarters.

Remarkable.

Diverse fish in relief, made by Jonathan’s goldsmith grandfather in Munich

Elephant hawk moth caterpillar, I think

VW cushion, with a VW camper van parked outside

Panorama of the garden, with pond in which vicious dragonfly nymphs lurk

Embraced by a tree

Uprooted

Hobbits

Bleached thistles in a landscape

Jonathan and Elaine

Greenhouse, with what may be biological pest control habitats

Blackboard outside the garden shop

Lifebelt

Group shot with Jonathan

Group shot with me

A lovely day in Forest Row, near East Grinstead, with Jonathan Shopley, his wife Andrea, her mother Peggy (who hosted me in Durban when I was there many, many moons ago), and their daughters Arianne and Kira.

Delighted to see Jonathan’s motorbike propped outside, the one which he rode from South Africa to Britain in the mid-1980s, landing up on our doorstep in Barnes, and working with me for several year before heading on to such places as ADL, LBS (for an MBA) and the Carbon Neutral Company.

One of the first things we saw once out in their glorious garden was a huge caterpillar, which I think we have established was an Elephant Hawk Moth, getting ready for greater things.

Jonathan, Elaine and I had a wonderful walk around the area and through the grounds of Michael Hall, the nearby Rudolf Steiner school. Lots of butterflies and moths, plus blackberries and damsons in the hedgerows.

Amazing how much history is clustered nearby, including Chartwell and the hospital where the Guinea Pig Club was founded by WWII casualties who were being treated by the legendary reconstructive plastic surgeon, Archibald McIndoe.

Rather idiotically, I left my Barbour at the Shopley’s home when we drove off, something I’m increasingly inclined to do, with a debris field extending behind me that is worthy of the most absent-minded professor. Happily it has been found: it’s old, bought for my second Davos in 2003, but a garment to which (despite appearances) I am more than a little attached.

Screen on floor of the first session

Geodesic roof eyes the proceedings

Geoff Kendall facilitates a table

Derek’s badged

Values etched in glass

Values on wheels

Flew to Copenhagen on Thursday evening, for a stakeholder session yesterday – exploring where Novo Nordisk might head next in its sustainability thinking and ambitions.

Arrived very late at the Phoenix Hotel, but luckily found Polly Cortice just checking in – and joined her and Jonathon Porritt for a delightful supper.

The full session the following day was facilitated by Rob Cameron and Geoff Kendall of SustainAbility. In introducing myself up front, for the outsiders and the Novo Nordisk people, I said I had realised the previous evening that I had now worked, off and on, with Novo Nordisk for 25 years.

In 1989, the company’s then-president Mads Ovlisen invited Julia Hailes and I in to do an early environmental audit of the company, in the wake of the publication of The Green Consumer Guide, which had caused problems for the industrial enzymes side of the business.

The company has changed profoundly since, spinning out its enzymes business, rechartering itself around the Triple Bottom Line, and growing like fury. and the growth looks set to continue. In the next 9 years, for example,  it is set to grow from just over 40,000 people to around 60,000.

But the values we were impressed by way back in 1989 remain largely unchanged – though various of the external stakeholders wondered how Novo Nordisk can reconcile further growth (which will drive it up the ranks of global pharmaceutical companies) with its values.

In the afternoon, the Sustainability Committee, which Lise Kingo chairs, joined us for an animated – and animating – discussion. The proceedings were subject to the Chatham House Rule, so much of the detail must remain under wraps until Novo Nordisk publishes the results.

On the flight back, I finished off Helen Macdonald’s wonderful book, H Is For Hawk. Quite simply, it is superb – and deeply intertwined with T.H. White’s The Goshawk, which I read in my early teens (though I confess I failed to realise then just how much abuse White unwittingly did to his hawk.)