Journal

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

ARGILE ET CENDRES

Well, I made it back on the cycle last night, so no plot to unhorse me. At times it was almost as if I was swimming on wheels, but there was a strange joy to it, too. Took a warm shower and then curled up with The World Is Not Enough, Zoe Oldenbourg’s novel of the Middle Ages, first published in 1946 as Argile et Cendres, or Clay and Embers. Took me a while to get into it, but now I’m hooked. Today, it’s off to Oxford, for the annual Skoll Foundation summit on social entrepreneurship.

Tuesday, March 29, 2005
RAIN CYCLE

Time to go home and it’s really pouring outside. But I have to cycle because the machine is booked in for a service tomorrow, ahead of our San Francisco trip next week. Still, something to take my mind off the cat-fighting in the build-up to the UK Election.

The latest issue of Green Futures came through today, with a long piece on the Election hopes and perspectives of a number of folk in the sustainable development world, including Sara Parkin and Jonathon Porritt. One of my quotes was to the effect that: “politicians who use sustainable development language still sound like government-approved Soviet rock’n’rollers: derivative, second-rate and, ultimately, unconvincing. And such language — particularly when delivered from the missionary position — simply alienates people.”

If I don’t make it home this evening, maybe it was a Government plot …

Monday, March 28, 2005

EASTER WRITING

It seems a long time since we got back from Cyprus, but that’s largely because last week was fairly busy, with a blaze of meetings and various articles to write. Have also been preparing for upcoming travels in the weeks ahead, starting with the Skoll Foundation annual summit on social entreprneurship, to be held in Oxford later this week. But the Easter weekend, apart from things like the usual frantic helicoptering overhead in the final minutes of the annual Oxbridge Boat Race, has been spent largely on the book, including a new chapter on ‘hot spots’ of social enterprise. Every so often I have been tempted to go out and sit in the sun, but the weather remains pretty chilly.

Saturday, March 19, 2005

HOME

The return flight is uneventful. As the group disbands around the baggage carousels in Terminal 3, there is a bittersweet sense of loss, of interesting conversations truncated. But there is also a sense of completion, of a great wheel turning and coming momentarily to rest. Maybe it’s the carousels, but I find the story of St Catherine of Alexandria running through my mind as I watch the baggage go round. (On reflection, she had been mentioned as we drove towards Famagusta Bay.)

Maybe she was martyred on the wheel, recalled in our Catherine’s Wheel firework, or maybe the spiked torture wheel was miraculously destroyed and, instead, she was beheaded. But her story symbolises both the trials and tribulations ahead of us, and, though St Catherine is now largely passe the potential of some extraordinary people and peoples to rise above them.

It also reminds me that pretty much top of my current list of places to visit is Alexandria.

Royal room with a view, St Hilarion (©JE)

Friday, March 18, 2005

KANTARA AND THE PANHANDLE

Lizards and Moon (©JE)

Another long haul trip, up into the island’s eastward-pointing Panhandle. Having been in Kantara House at school in Nicosia, this was another must, and once again exceeds my expectations. The road up to the castle is endlessly serpentine and I often wonder whether the bus will make it at all. We pass a fair few summer villas that are boarded up, but which in the event of any peace settlement will no doubt be the subject of energetic court cases by the dispossessed Greek owners.

Kantara is a hugely powerful castle, with the best-preserved remains of the three mountain castles we have seen. From the heights, you command huge sweeps of the northern coastline, Panhandle to the east and Famagusta Bay to the south. The flanks of the mountain are a riot of cyclamen, giant fennel and other plants unknown to me. On the way down, we stop under trees for an impromptu snack, which includes sheep cheese and beer, wine and raki, made by a distillery near Famagusta, which I am surprised to find myself hugely enjoying.

Among several things we do during the rest of the day, what stands out in my mind is the visit to Ayios Philon, part of the ancient coastal city of Karpasia. The arms of the long-since destroyed harbour are engaging enough, apart from the endemic plastic flotsam and jetsam, but as the larks trill overhead I spot two large lizards on an arch of the ruined basilica, with the Moon in the background. Spring into action with the new digital camera we bought for Elaine at Heathrow but which to date I am the only one to use, largely because I forgot to bring the cable for my Sony CyberShot, with the result that I am limited to the capacity of the two memory sticks I happened to have brought along.

One thing I wish I’d caught as we passed: it was in the village near the Panhandle where Turks and Greeks continue to live side by side – and where, uniquely in my memory, the cafe signs feature both the Coca-Cola and Pepsi signs alongside one another. A nice gesture. (In the 1950s, Coke seemed to dominate, but now Pepsi is everywhere in northern Cyprus, though a few Coke signs start to surface as you drive towards the Panhandle.)

Then, just outside the basilica, I come across several seething clusters of the caterpillars I remember so well from the 1950s. There is an instant, powerful sense of the endless cycles of life and death, of civilisation and decline into barbarism. Cyprus, positioned in the path of so many marauding, crusading and empire-building peoples has been subject to intense pressures, but once again friction has resulted in architectural, urban and cultural pearls among the devastation.

Our own stay on the island was part of the wind-down of the British Empire. Waning days. There will be other Empires, some imposed, some embraced. And Cyprus will continue to be at the epicentre of the endless succession of geological, climatic, cultural, ethnic and political tectonic forces that have shaped and reshaped the region and the island. But, whether you see it in a seething heap of caterpillars or in the boat-builders working on new vessels just over the ramparts from a 2300-year-old wreck, this island leaves you with a sense of the ways in which the human spirit, in all its infinite and troublesome variety, can prevail.

As it winds down, I reflect that the trip was far better than I had any reason to expect or hope. And I’m happy to have seen northern Cyprus again, warts and all, before the forces of development really get to work on it. Even today, it is clear that the island’s economy is completely unsustainable. When we were returning from the Panhandle, we saw the deflated hulk of the giant red membrane in which fresh water was towed in from Turkey. How long before the endless buildings mushrooming up across the island are the long-since deserted ruins of the future?

Like several others I have travelled with in recent days, I come away with a heightened sense not only of the vulnerability of all civilisations, but also of how difficult it is going to be to sort out Cyprus politically and of how challenging it will be to work out a sustainable relationship between Turkey and the European Union. That, however, is something to think about when I’m back in London.

Tomorrow waits to take wing (©JE)

Thursday, March 17, 2005

ST HILARION AND VOUNI

St Hilarion (©JE)

The day of days. In all the years I dreamed of coming back to Cyprus, one symbol stood out in my mind, partly I suspect because of the associations with the romantic, brutish Lionheart, Richard of England. This was the castle of St Hilarion, which we had seen every day when we awoke from the balcony of our hotel in Kyrenia.

Among my strongest memories of the island was playing up on the jousting field beneath the castle, with the March girls: Molly, Terry and Peggy, part of one of two American families we grew up alongside in Nicosia. As Elaine and I walked around Kyrenia harbour, I looked for the house where we visited the Marches at some point during our time on the island. The other family, just across the road from our house, was headed by the American consul, whose wife, a detail that stuck in my imagination, had died some time before by choking on a chicken bone.

Even before we got up to the castle, however, we could see the damage done by the fires of 1995. Though the flanks of the mountains are still green at this time of year, most of the wonderful forest cover of the northern side of this part of the Kyrenia range was burned in the three days that the fires raged out of control. Because they started in various places, arson has always been suspected, with Greek Cypriots, Greeks, Israelis and Kurdish separatists among those fingered. It also has to be said that Turkish incompetence and chronic under-funding of the forestry service had a fair amount to do with the eventual scale of the damage, which affected almost 70 square miles.

In the event, the castle proved to even more wonderful than I had remembered, not least because you can now get right to the very pinnacles in a way I suspect wasn’t possible when I was eight or nine. The one sour note: the jousting ground, once surrounded by trees, is now naked because of the fires and, to add insult to injury, the Turks have slapped a helipad and what looks like an assault course into its very heart. Poetic justice, I’m sure, but tragic nonetheless.

Again, the views are unbelievable, under clear blue skies. The fire apparently raged all about in June 1995, destroying anything built of wood and plaster, but you would hardly guess it today. The wildflowers are everywhere, with mandrake particularly in evidence around the walls.

On the way back, we drop into the cafe to get a glass of orange and buy a jar of carob syrup. Homemade by the wife of the cafe’s manager, the orange is delicious, very much like the lemonade my mother, Pat, used to make all those years ago in Nicosia. But it is so cold that, as I hurry to down it in time to catch up with the rest of the group, it almost scorches my throat.

In the end, it turns out that I needn’t have hurried, since others had tarried a bit lower down, and those that hadn’t were busily warning the habitual denizen of the back seat of the bus that his end of the vehicle was cantilevered out over space, rather like the end of The Italian Job. But, as befits a man who had served as a doctor for a community of 600 drug addicts near Hong Kong for something like 30 years, he appears unfazed.

From the lower ramparts of St Hilarion, looking down on jousting field (©JE)

After St Hilarion, we head south towards Nicosia, then turn right, westwards, for the trip to the Monastery of St Mamas and the hilltop palace of Vouni. To get there, though, we have to drive through one of the saddest regions of the entire island.

As The Rough Guide notes, if you mention Guzelyurt (known to Greek Cypriots as Morfou) you will trigger grief among Greek Cypriots, who recall that before the 1974 invasion this region was a hub of Greek Cypriot enterprise. The endless citrus orchards, melon patches and strawberry fields are irrigated with water from huge underground aquifers. Unfortunately, the acreage under cultivation has been increased since 1974 and the water resources over-pumped, with the result that saltwater has intruded from the sea, contaminating a considerable and growing area of land.

We take in the slightly grotesque archaeology and wildlife museum, next to the monastery, with its eight-legged lamb (stuffed with the same lack of art that was true, I suspect, of poor Bragadino) and a variety of birds, reptiles and so on that have been around so long that they would have mummified even if they hadn’t been so artlessly preserved. But I do get a close look at a bee-eater, which is enough to confirm that it had indeed been a flight of these glorious birds that I had started in the cliffside ruins of Dura Europa, Syria, and then watched wing their way down over the green Euphrates.

When we get to the monastery church, there is the usual display of models of different parts of the human anatomy that the relevant saint is supposed to treat, even cure. Senol manages to knock a heap of the things over, with the most enormous clatter, though I doubt that the effects will have been felt in ears and limbs across the region. And even if they were, the monastery contains a rather unpleasant looking ‘sweating stone’ that exudes what looks like the sludge left after carob syrup is made, which is apparently very effective in such cases.

Given that SustainAbility is now working on tax avoidance and evasion by companies, I am particularly interested in St Mamas. A poor, 12th-century hermit, he reputedly refused to pay his equivalent of the poll tax. Soldiers were sent to bring him in for punishment, but as they were trundling along they saw a lamb threatened by a lion (never actually known to inhabit these parts, but let it lie). St Mamas saved the lamb and rode the wild lion into Nicosia. So impressed were the Byzantine authorities that it is said that they forgave him his taxes. There are now 14 churches across Cyprus dedicated to the memory of the patron saint of tax avoiders.

Then onwards again, with the snow-capped Troodos mountains looming to the southwest, into copper-mining country. The mines for which Cyprus has been famous for millennia are now pretty much abandoned, partly because of exhaustion but also because of the economic effects of the invasion. As we walk back from the Vouni palace site, I look out across the plain and my eye catches something which literally takes me back almost 50 years.

I have always remembered that when we went to Israel we visited a great mining complex, maybe even the source of the legend of King Solomon’s mines. But as I see the vast toroidal ‘donut shaped’ hill, I know in an instant that this is where I saw the mining. Maybe someone mentioned King Solomon at the time? The shape is exactly as I remembered it. And later in the day Charles lends me Colin Thubron’s Journey into Cyprus, flagging the extraordinary account of the mining here. The mining of recent times, with dynamite and bulldozers, often cut through the galleries dug by generations of earlier miners, many of them slaves. Underground, this area is shot through with tunnels like some giant termite’s nest.

On the way back, we pass the heavily smoking conical furnaces of the charcoal burners. Like the smokeless fuel people, they help clean up urban area but at the expense of fairly intense local pollution.

And isn’t it odd that as a non-carnivorous omnivore for over 30 years, one of my most intense and delightful memories of Cyprus is of charcoal-grilled lamb?

Copper mine from Vouni (©JE)

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

SALAMIS AND FAMAGUSTA

An early departure eastwards, en route to a rendezvous with a couple of saints, the ruins of Salamis (dating back to the 11th-century BC) and the Venetian fortifications of Famagusta. The high points for me were Salamis, which I don’t remember visiting as a child, and Famagusta, though some of the fired clay toys in the museum at the Monastery of Saints Paul and Barnabas were outstanding. The story of the discovery of St Barnabas’ body, though, smacks of outright fraud. But perhaps a childhood partly spent sandwiched between Protestants and Catholics (Northern Ireland), Christians and Muslims (Cyprus) and Jews and Muslims (Israel, which we visited from Cyprus) left me with an over-developed scepticism about all faiths?

Monastery of St Barnabas (©JE)

The Salamis visit started with a box of chilled oranges and tangerines from the garden of Senol Ciner, extracted from the hold of the bus. We then found our way around the ruins of the gymnasium, forum and theatre, in the midst of sand dunes and wild fennel ‘forests’, the latter often covered in small snails that in places had brought entire plants low with their gnawing and combined weight. Much of this city, periodically brought to ruin by earthquakes and sacked by Arab raiders, was until recently under the dunes, indeed, it is thought that a fair amount still is, and some of the ruins also extend out under the sea. In the end, the inhabitants gave up, moving to Arsinoe, which eventually became Famagusta.

After lunch, we walked around Famagusta, starting with the so-called Othello’s Tower (originally built in the 12th-century Lusignan period), where I was impressed both by the air vents from the cannon chambers built deep into the walls and by the extraordinary weathering on stones used in the internal walls of the powder room, no doubt because of the recycling of parts of the earlier Lusignan fortifications. Incidentally, Leonardo da Vinci is said to have advised the Venetians on the design of the fortifications.

Then on to various churches and the Cathedral of St Nicholas (aka the Lala Mustafa Mosque). The latter is quite extraordinary, considered to outshine its Nicosia counterpart, the Ayia Sofia. Unfortunately, the top of the cathedral’s two towers were shot away during the siege of 1571, generally considered to be one of the greatest battles of the medieval era.

Orange (©JE)

During the 10-month siege – an earlier, more protracted version of the Alamo in 1836 – some 8000 defenders held off around 200000 Ottomans, inflicting an estimated 50000 casualties. By the time the white flag was run up by the survivors, after the long-promised relief fleet from Venice had failed to materialise, the level of bravery had gone off the scale. Then the Ottomans perpetrated another of their grim atrocities, which I recall reading about when very much younger.

The surrender had been agreed on terms that meant that the defenders could return to Venice, but the Ottomans soon changed their minds. Tortured for days, Marcantonio Bragadino, the brilliant commander of the defenders, was finally flayed alive between two granite pillars that still stand near the cathedral, and were apparently originally brought across from Salamis. His skin was then stuffed with straw and paraded around the city. Later, it would be ransomed by the man’s descendants and is now to be found in a Venetian church.

As we head back towards Nicosia and Kyrenia, the sun goes down in a blaze of tangerine and pistachio, the mountains highlighted in all their Gothic splendour. And I think back to when we left in 1959, particularly to the sight of our pale blue Jaguar 2.4, my father’s pride and joy, being lifted in a great net into the ship’s hold. A small drama compared to what else has happened here, but breath was held.

Docks from the Venetian walls, Famagusta (©JE)

Ghost town extends south of Famagusta (©JE)

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

BUFFAVENTO CASTLE

The happy couple (©JE)

A stunning walk to the top of Buffavento Castle, past the memorial to the crew of a Turkish Airlines aircraft that crashed here in 1988, the year we published The Green Consumer Guide. Again glorious weather, with pairs, always pairs, of quail or black francolin exploding out ahead of us. Their flying habits seem eminently suited to a country carpeted with shotgun cartridge cases.

The views are out of this world, back and forth along the coastal strip and, on the inner side of the mountains, across the central plain: called Mesaoria in the South, Mesarya in the North. The last time we were here, we visited the monastery down the hill, where the monks gave my sister Caroline a small glass basket of sugared almonds. The monks left post haste after the 1974 invasion.

Despite what happened here to the monastics and , much, much worse, to John Visconti, I am literally having the time of my life. This is the highest of the three mountain castles we will visit, some 3100 feet (945 metres) up. And Visconti? He tried to warn his friend King Peter I of his Queen’s infidelities while her husband was abroad. Disbelieved, though it seems that the queen was guilty as charged, the wretched Visconti was imprisoned and tortured in Kyrenia, then bundled off to Buffavento where he was starved to death.

I wouldn’t mind having some of my ashes scattered up here, though with the winds that buffet these summits in bad weather they probably wouldn’t stick around for long.

Then on to the nearby Herbarium and a different (I think) abandoned monastery, with upper walkways that are developing nicely as a total hazard to life and limb. Periodic sense as I walk around that my ashes may be blowing in the winds sooner than I had planned, though someone has kindly written in chalk where the hazards are greatest.

Buffavento Castle entrance (©JE)

Monday, March 14, 2005

NORTHERN NICOSIA

After a visit to part of the Green Line where it cuts through Nicosia, taking a moment to view the bullet holes where soldiers sprayed the top of a tall building to knock out one or more snipers, we are dropped off at the Kyrenia Gate in north Nicosia. Here I easily recognise the ramparts, topped by a long, low building with a pan tile roof, surrounded by tall eucalyptuses.

We walk the short distance to the delightful remnants of the Mevlevi Tekke (or ‘Whirling Dervish’) museum, with its line of 16 tombs under six domes and its blossomy courtyard. Lines of elegant tombstones, the style of the carved headdress topping the stones apparently speaking volumes to initiates. The music to which the Dervishes danced included that of the reed flute, with the lonely sound of the reed flute or ney ‘uprooted from its reed bed’ seen as a metaphor (I read in Marc Dubin’s excellent Cyprus: The Rough Guide) for the human soul separated from its Godhead, keening for reunion with the Infinite. Scandalous to orthodox Muslims, the order was widely suppressed, though the British allowed it to live in Cyprus, where it lasted until 1954, a couple of years before the Family Elkington arrived on the island.

Ataturk Meydani, Nicosia (©JE)

Buyuk Han, Nicosia (©JE)

As we walk along, it is hard to miss the head of Ataturk ‘propped up like something from a Dali/Orwell dystopia’ which overlooks Ataturk Meydani, long the central hub of Turkish life in the city. Again, I recognise the law courts, built by the long-ago British. We pause for a moment by the granite column, once topped by a Lion of St Mark, but toppled by the Ottomans in 1570. The British re-erected the column in 1915, though this time topping it out with a globe instead of the Venetian lion.

We buy Turkish delight in the covered market, made with ‘mastic’, which we take to be gum arabic. Then the Buyuk Hamam, once part of a 14th-century church but now the sunken facade of the city’s largest public bath, and the Buyuk Han. As we walk towards the Buyuk Han, I turn to Elaine and say that this used to be a prison. Something else from childhood, I suspect. Then we would hear prisoners clattering their plates and cups against the bars of their cells in at least one of the Nicosia prisons, though the Buyuk Han’s incarnation as a prison was from an earlier period of British rule, I think. My (perhaps mistaken) memory is that the clattering was when executions were due.

Ayia Sofia/Selimiye Camii, Nicosia (©JE)

There would have been much more clattering when the Ottomans broke into the city in 1570, slaughtering many of the Venetian defenders, and sending the heads of the defeated leaders to the defenders of Kyrenia, persuading them to surrender without further ado. We visit Ayia Sofia, begun by French masons accompanying the Crusaders in 1209 (two years, incidentally, after the original Whirling Dervish, Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi, was born in what is now Afghanistan). The cathedral was under construction for 150 years and was still unfinished when the city fell. Long term thinking incarnate.

The Ottomans ‘who had been burning the old, disabled and ugly among the city’s inhabitants, the rest sent off into slavery’ turned the pulpit and pews into firewood and evicted the dead from their tombs in the cathedral’s floors. Because they also whitewashed the interior, it’s possible to get a very clear sense of the Gothic structure. But, with the wall-to-wall prayer carpet cut on the cross, to enable the faithful to pray towards Mecca, there is something weirdly skewed about the place, an effect heightened by the twin 50-metre minarets grafted like SAM-7 batteries atop the building.

Elaine and Senol Ciner, Lapidary Museum, Nicosia (©JE)

Among the other places we drop into are the Lapidary Museum and the Dervish Pasha Konak, once the home of the publisher of the island’s first Turkish newspaper. This is hard by the Green Line, as is the old Armenian church we visit. This is now a grisly ruin, full of rubbish and graffiti. One graffito is carved into the plaster. Some take it to be an elegantly cut wine bottle, but I rather insensitively point out that it is more likely a hand grenade. The Armenians, once rewarded for siding with the Ottoman invaders, got it wrong in the 1960s, when the Turkish equivalent of EOKA expelled them from the area because they were judged to have aligned with the Greek Cypriots.

On our way back, we walk through a desperately poor part of the city. And when we pass a run-down cinema, I ask Senol where I might have seen the film The Vikings in an open cinema. The film haunted me over the years, largely because of the sequence where a man has a hand chopped off and is thrown into a wolf-pit (though this was tame compared to what happened to Marcantonio Bragadino in Famagusta, where we are headed on Thursday). As we drive back towards Kyrenia, Senol points out the open-air cinema and it is exactly as I remember it, though this shrine to the visual arts has long since been ‘deconsecrated’.

Chair in the Dervish Pasha Konak, Nicosia (©JE)

Sunday, March 13, 2005

BELLAPAIS

Bellapais Abbey (©JE)

We awoke to wonderful blue skies, with nothing slated until 12.00, when we all headed off for Bellapais Abbey. Having recently re-read Lawrence Durrell’s Bitter Lemons, I was intrigued to see the competing candidates for his “Tree of Idleness”, including a mulberry tree and a Japanese pagoda tree, under which a seemingly unending game of backgammon was played in Durrell’s time.

We wandered around the Abbey, from which I spotted a scarecrow in the gardens way below, dressed ,it seemed, like an archbishop, complete with mitre. It (or more likely hunting pressure) seems to have been remarkably effective: one of the things that struck a number of us was the paucity of birdlife on the island, coupled with the crunch of blue or red plastic shotgun cartridges underfoot in the wilder areas. We did see a fair few sparrows and hooded crows, however, plus the occasional falcon, duck and lark.

Lunch at the Huzur Agac restaurant, overlooking the Abbey. The first of many meze meals, which I like tremendously, but this time with a tank of beady-eyed piranha overlooking my back throughout the proceedings. They seemed to be aggressive kissers: most had seriously gnawed mouthparts. As we walked back to our bus, a number of us took a closer look at a listing monument, a coach that was suspended at the top of a long slope down to a rubbish drop in the centre of the village. Given how much attention we paid to it, I fear it could become a listed monument.

Listing monument (©JE)

Later in the day, we wandered around Kyrenia castle. This was a prison for EOKA terrorists (or freedom-fighters, depending on your view) when we were there in the 1950s, so inaccessible. I loved St George’s, the encapsulated Byzantine church thought to date from the 1100s, once outside the walls but absorbed into the much more powerful structure of the Venetian period.

Though some probably loved the display of torture methods, with a Mumluk prisoner standing in for the multitudes abused and slaughtered within these walls, I had taken off on my own along the battlements, drinking in the astounding panoramas and the glorious diversity of wildflowers erupting from between the stonework. I also managed to shoot in to the Shipwreck Museum, which was beautifully presented. When it sank some 2300 years ago, the wrecked ship had already been 80 years old and much repaired. The cargo was mainly composed of amphorae of wine, with the 4-to-5-man crew apparently subsisting on almonds, together with what fish they could catch along the way.

Shipwreck (©JE)

On the subject of fish, the Turkish Cypriot I had sat alongside on the flight from Izmir had warned that much of the fish now eaten on Cyprus comes in from Turkey. He noted that the damming of the Nile at Aswan had stopped the flow of nutrients into the eastern Mediterranean. The result â as I knew from my work in the Nile delta in 1974, was a collapse of many offshore fisheries, though I had no idea that the impacts had extended as far north as Cyprus.

Later still, with the castle about to close, I again prowled the walls with Elaine, Charles (Hind) and several others. We stood on the battlements overlooking the harbour, watching the sun go down behind the mountains, through the smoky haze. A magical moment, though we had earlier walked along the quay and seen the astonishing profusion of plastic bags and beer bottles in the apparently romantic waters below.

Kyrenia harbour (©JE)

ROOM 404

After the chaos of the Turkish Airlines section of Heathrow’s Terminal 3, where we found that one member of the study tour was an old friend, it was almost a relief to get on the flight to Izmir. After an hour’s stopover at Izmir, we were off again to Ercan airport in Cyprus, arriving well after midnight, local time. The air was pleasantly chill as we disembarked from the jet and walked across the tarmac to the terminal, but the faint, mimosa-like fragrance was utterly delightful, seductive.

As our bus headed westward across the plain towards Nicosia, then turned right and north for Kyrenia (the Turks call it Girne), we were welcomed by the bearded course director, Charles Hind, and his bearded local colleague, Senol Ciner. Inevitably, it proved that they had other qualities, too. I was slightly taken aback, however, by how quickly we got to the coast and how low the Kyrenia range seemed to be. Then it struck me that the roads must have been straightened considerably since the 1950s and that, in the dark, the peaks were looming on either side of the pass.

Getting into Kyrenia proved a bit of a trial with the bus having to negotiate some particularly tight corners, waltzing around a number of roadworks. And the initial impression of the neon-lit casinos as we headed for the Dome Hotel seemed to confirm my worst fears. But we were too tired to fret, picked up the keys to our room, 404, overlooking the sea as it turned out, and headed off to bed.

Casino, Kyrenia (©JE)

Saturday, March 12, 2005

A RETURN TO CYPRUS

Omnipresent symbol of Turkish presence (©JE)

They say you can’t return to your childhood, but ever since that day in 1959 when my family and I took ship for Italy, I have ached to return to Cyprus. As the great ship turned out to sea and the Famagusta docks and fortifications shrank into the eastern horizon, I stood at the warm, salty metal rail, nine years old, feeling like some sort of refugee. It would be forty-six years before I once again set foot on Cypriot soil, or, as it turned out, tarmac. And by the time I did the island had been torn in half for over a generation.

What follows is the story of a few short days in late March, 2005, when Elaine and I embarked on our second ACE study tour (www.study-tours.org). The first, to Syria, had been such an outstanding success that some part of me dreaded tempting fate again, particularly where it involved a return to Cyprus, which, alongside the years we spent on a farm outside Limavady, Northern Ireland, had so powerfully shaped my consciousness and interests. In the event, we both returned agreeing that the trip had exceeded our wildest expectations.

In part, perhaps, that’s because our expectations were low. Ever since the mass graves and other atrocities of the 1970s, peaking during the 1974 Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus, I had pretty much given up any thought of returning, given that most of the places I wanted to see were north of the bitterly disputed Green (or Attila) Line that now separated the Greek south from the Turkish north. It was only when the Turkish Cypriots finally voted for membership of the European Union, only to have the Greek Cypriots vote to keep them out, that I began to think in terms of a possible return.

After checking with colleagues at Amnesty International, to see whether there were still reasons to stay away, we decided to give it a go. Booking late, we were lucky to get a couple of cancellations.

Another end of the spectrum, asphodel, thought to flower in the Elysian Fields (©JE)

Sunday, March 06, 2005

TIT REFLECTIONS

Much of the weekend spent either reading stacks of newspapers or working on the book, which is going quite well. As Elaine and I walked around the Common this evening, I found myself wondering aloud whether – assuming I finish this book – I will be satisfied with having authored 17? Ended up suspecting not. It’s a bit like the tit at our front window.

For weeks now the same little bird has been perching on a branch of the strawberry grape vine and then hurling itself at the window, presumably at its own reflection. I have also been plastering (in the Polyfilla manner) and painting a wall in the front room after our desperately geriatric piano (which had concealed the relevant bit of wall) left for different climes on Friday, so I could hear the constant click-collisions of the bird’s beak against the glass. And I suppose that’s akin to me and books, really.

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

IMPERIAL COLLEGE, ACCA & .COM

A highly enjoyable day, starting off with a near-3-hour session with MSc students at Imperial College, something I have done each year for years, with Andrew Blaza at the helm. A great opportunity to test SustainAbility’s thinking, priorities and overall approach with the rising generation.

Then on to ACCA (Association of Chartered and Certified Accountants), to chair meeting of the Social and Environmental Committee. Pivotal presentations from Rob Lake of Henderson Global Investors on the growing inter-connections between the CSR and corprate tax agendas, from Roger Adams of ACCA on same issue, and then from David Bent of Forum for the Future and Adrian Henriques on their monetised triple bottom line balance sheet for a cider company.

Then back in rain and sleet to SustainAbility, in time to celebrate the launch of our new website. Putting the new site together has been a major task, particularly since we started again from the ground up. There is still a good deal more to do, but the basic structure is there and the interior design will evolve in the coming months.

Tuesday, March 01, 2005
ON TIME

Every so often, one is brought up short by how time passes. Yesterday I worked at home on the book and today I mainly worked on a Unilever project, with time behaving itself more or less normally. Then this evening Satish Kumar dropped in – and mentioned that his magazine Resurgence (http://www.resurgence.org) will be 40 next year. Having read it since the late 1960s, off and on, and written for it more recently, it’s odd to try to think back now to that world. It seems forever in the past, even though much of the music remains weirdly alive. It’s like a geological era, with some things that should be fossils still flitting around our heads. That doesn’t apply to Satish, though, who at 69 is still firing on at least 70 cylinders.

CEDAR REVOLUTION

Syria may be a wonderful country to visit, as we did a few years back, but the regime remains a pretty unpleasant one. The news that the Syrian-backed Lebanese government has stpped down, following widespread protests after the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Shafiq Hariri in Beirut on 14 February, seems like good news, potentially at least. But it’s always interesting to see the spin Al-Jazeera puts on such things. Click title to read the Al-Jazeera angle.

Sunday, February 27, 2005

PETER BENENSON

One of the great privileges of advancing old age is that you get asked to sit on advisory councils and boards. One of these invitations that has meant a great deal to me has been the invitation to be a member of the board of trustees of the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (www.business-humanrights.org), spun out from Amnesty. And today I was forwarded the news of the death of Amnesty International founder, Peter Benenson. Here’s the press release AI issued:

Death of Amnesty International founder:

Peter Benenson, 1921-2005

Peter Benenson, the founder of the worldwide human rights organisation Amnesty International, died yesterday evening. He was 83. Mr Benenson founded and inspired Amnesty International in 1961 first as a one-year campaign for the release of six prisoners of conscience. But from there came a worldwide movement for human rights and in its midst an international organisation — Amnesty International — which has taken up the cases of many thousands of victims of human rights violations and inspired millions to human rights defence the world round.

“Peter Benenson’s life was a courageous testament to his visionary
commitment to fight injustice around the world,” said Irene Khan,
Secretary General of Amnesty International.

“He brought light into the darkness of prisons, the horror of torture
chambers and tragedy of death camps around the world. This was a man whose conscience shone in a cruel and terrifying world, who believed in the power of ordinary people to bring about extraordinary change and, by creating Amnesty International, he gave each of us the opportunity to make a difference.”

“In 1961 his vision gave birth to human rights activism. In 2005 his
legacy is a world wide movement for human rights which will never die.”

The one-year Appeal for Amnesty was launched on 28 May 1961, in an article in the British newspaper, The Observer, called “The Forgotten Prisoners“. That appeal attracted thousands of supporters, and started a worldwide human rights movement.

The catalyst for the original campaign was Mr Benenson’s sense of
outrage after reading an article about the arrest and imprisonment of
two students in a cafe in Lisbon, Portugal, who had drunk a toast to
liberty.

In the first few years of Amnesty International’s existence, Mr Benenson supplied much of the funding for the movement, went on research missions and was involved in all aspects of the organisation’s affairs.

Other activities that Mr Benenson was involved in during his lifetime
included; adopting orphans from the Spanish Civil War, bringing Jews who had fled Hitler’s Germany to Britain, observing trials as a member of the Society of Labour Lawyers, helping to set up the organisation “Justice” and establishing a society for people with coeliac disease.

At a ceremony to mark Amnesty International’s 25th anniversary, Mr Benenson lit what has become the organisation’s symbol — a candle entwined in barbed wire — with the words: “The candle burns not for us, but for all those whom we failed to rescue from prison, who were shot on the way to prison, who were tortured, who
were kidnapped, who ‘disappeared’. That is what the candle is for.”

Today Amnesty International is into its 44th year. It has become the
world’s largest independent human rights organisation, with more than 1.8 million members and committed supporters worldwide.

For more information:

The man who decided it was time for a change – Peter Benenson remembered by Richard Reoch:
http://amnesty-news.c.topica.com/maadeqTabeANCbdSp2Ab/

Background information on Peter Benenson, the founder of Amnesty
International:
http://amnesty-news.c.topica.com/maadeqTabeANDbdSp2Ab/

Saturday, February 26, 2005

MERLIN, GREEN ALLIANCE & NOVO NORDISK

Source: encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com

Back late last night – after an aborted landing at Heathrow, when our plane had to shriek back into the skies – from a day spent outside Copenhagen with Novo Nordisk, alongside Sophia Tickell. When I got home, Michael Wood was on TV probing the myth of Arthur and the Round Table. Merlin turns out to have been a flaxen-haired boy, by Wood’s account. And thoughts of airborne excitements, of once-and-future kings and of those who will return to defend England, put me in mind of Thursday evening and a very different breed of Merlin.

I was strolling around London’s Science Museum at an after-hours reception ahead of 300 or so people convening in the iMAX theatre to celebrate 25 years of the Green Alliance (www.green-alliance.org.uk). Among the extrordinary flotsam and jetsam of the Industrial Revolution, I came across a Merlin engine from a 1943 Spitfire, which rose to defend these islands in desperate days. Oddly, if someone hadn’t pointed it out I would probably have brushed past the Merlin in quest of Stephenson’s Rocket, which at least had a chimney. But the Merlin certainlly has presence, even on blocks. Ever the romantic, I adore the engine’s sound, though no doubt those who tore through the skies behind these things – like my father – experience a rather different set of emotions when one of the few working survivors roars throatily overhead.

And that had me wondering what all of those environmentalists gathered in the Science Museum will be best remembered for – or by? Given that people like the Eden Project’s Tim Smit and BedZED’s Bill Dunster were among the speakers, its at least possible that environmentalism will be as much remembered as much for things done as for things resisted.

MAALA SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY RATING

Having only been to Israel once, in the late 1950s, a visit which I loved (particularly sitting on the lap of the pilot of a DC-3 over the Dead Sea and being allowed to steer), I have found it a difficult country to come to terms with, not least because of the Palestinian issue. But in the midst of it all we have been lucky to come across some really impressive Israelis, among them Talia Aharoni, who is President of Tel Aviv-based MAALA – Business for Social Responsibility. MAALA have just announced what sounds like a significant advance, the launch of a new social responsibility rating index on the Tel-Aviv Stock Exchange. Their press release:

TEL-AVIV STOCK EXCHANGE LAUNCHES SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE INVESTING INDEX

Monday, February 14, 2005 – The Tel-Aviv Stock Exchange launched the Maala Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) Index on February 13. The new index comprises the shares of the top 20 companies on the Maala social responsibility rating.

Maala is a non-profit professional organization uniting member businesses that are leaders in working towards social change in Israel. The organization promotes social and environmental responsibility in business and rates the largest companies in the economy according to their level of community involvement and contribution to society. Maala rates companies which are included in the TA-100 Index or whose turnover is larger than $100 million, from various sectors, including services, commerce, industry, construction, and infrastructure.

Shares on the Maala Social Responsibility Index must be among the TASE’s 200 most actively traded shares and must meet minimum public float requirements, including a 15% float rate and a float value of at least $18 million. The index will be published daily at the end of trading and updated annually on June 1 (first update on June 1, 2005).

Maala’s rating criteria reflect the organization’s view that social responsibility is expressed not merely in donations, but in the way in which firms manage their on-going business activities. Criteria include the scope of contributions in shekels, contributions relative to profit or turnover, and the companies’ conduct towards their employees, customers, suppliers, and the community and environment at large.

The complete criteria for Maala ratings are available at www.maala.org.il (Hebrew only).

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

CLIMATE HEATS UP AS AN ISSUE

Spent much of today working on slides for a series of presentations this year, starting off with a session with Novo Nordisk in Denmark on Friday, though with detours to do things like a BBC World interview on green consumerism in London and Beijing. In the process of putting together the slides, though, I have been asking friends and colleagues in different parts of the world for images illustrating their recent work. This evening, Canada’s GlobeScan (www.globescan.com) come back with a fascinating set of charts based on their surveys of sustainability experts internationally. Have taken part in their surveys for years.

The chart shown below illustrates the way that climate change has overtaken biotechnology-based issues, a key concern for companies like Novo in recent years. Interesting to recall that our relationship with Novo started in 1989, after the publication of The Green Consumer Guide, which had implications for their deteregent enzymes business. The way they handled the issue was brilliant – and the company remains one of the very few ‘pure play’ sustainability companies.

(© GlobeScan 2005)

Sunday, February 20, 2005

BRAUTIGAN & BILLABONG ODYSSEY

Gaia has been buying up the works of Richard Brautigan on eBay — and I started the day with his A Confederate General From Big Sur. My favourite passage to date is the piece on the punctuation marks in Ecclesiastes. The main character spends night after night reading Ecclesiastes and recording the number of each type of punctuation mark in his notebook. His explanation? He was treating it as a study in engineering. “Certainly before they build a ship know how many rivets it takes to hold the ship together and the various sizes of the rivets. I was curious about the number of rivets and the sizes of those rivets in Ecclesiastes, a dark and beautiful ship saling on our water.”

Then, after a walk with Elaine in Richmond Park, where we passed through a herd of red deer and could smell their unmistakable, unfortgettable aroma, Gaia and I sat down and watched Billabong Odyssey (www.billabongodyssey.com), a wildly wonderful surf movie. Lacks the gravitas of Riding Giants, which we saw recently, but what unadulterated fun! The image below was snapped from the TV screen at one point in the proceedings, actually the high point, when Mike Parsons scored 10 out of 10 for his unbelievable ride on a deep ocean giant. When that sort of thing happens, who’s keeping score? Not me.

A FUTURE FOR THE UN?

It felt faintly disloyal, but when John Mannochehri and I had lunch on Friday, we were talking about whether or not there was a future for the United Nations. John used to work for the United Nations Environment Programme and SustainAbility has partnered with UNEP for over ten years on our Engaging Stakeholders programme. But in today’s Sunday Times, Mark Mallock Brown — chief of staff to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan — goes way further. He notes that the UN is currently in deep trouble, having to explain itself to no less than six Congressional committees in the US, and that the oil-for-food scandal and “flagrant breaches of UN codes of behaviour in peacekeeping operations” are all conspiring to raise question marks over the organisation’s future. But he also notes the key role the UN has been playing in responding to the tsunami disasters and in places like Darfur, Sudan. There seems to be a strong downward momentum to some of this stuff, but there’s no question we need something like the UN, a 21st century version of this 1940s-era creature. There will be a UN summit in September, 60 years after the organisation was founded, so maybe someone will pull a rabbit out the hat in the meantime — and in time?

Thursday, February 17, 2005

FUTURE GENERATIONS TODAY: NSPCC

Because sustainable development is fundamentally about intergenerational equity, the agenda can be a bit slippery for business people with 24/7 lives. Probably the closest thing we have to future generations today is the current generation of young people, which is one reason why SustainAbility this year chose to support the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC). This morning a couple of people from NSPCC came in to do a team briefing, which was both eye-opening and disturbing. I hadn’t realised that levels of child abuse in the UK were quite so high, nor that – for example – NSPCC people trying to help child prostitutes in London’s East End are being shot at by pimps, so that they have to change their cars regularly in order to minimise the chances of being spotted. More at: www.nspcc.org.uk

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

MCLIBEL HUMAN RIGHTS WIN

Interesting development in the McLibel case. The two environmental campaigners who were the subject of a bittterly-fought libel case brought by McDonald’s seem to have won their appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. The Court concluded: “Given the enormity and complexity of [the trial process], the Court does not consider that the correct balance was struck between the need to protect the applicants’ rights to freedom of expression and the need to protect McDonalds’ rights and reputation.” By way of explanation, the Court added: “The more general interest in promoting the free circulation of information and ideas about the activities of powerful commercial entities, and possible ‘chilling’ effect on others are also important factors to be considered in this context, bearing in mind the legitimate and important role that campaign groups can play in stimulating public discussion.”

Having fought our own battle against McDonald’s in the late 1980s, in respect of what Julia Hailes and I had said in The Green Consumer Guide, I take a certain interest in the McLibel proceedings … http://news.ft.com/cms/s/4eb50e06-7f47-11d9-8ceb-00000e2511c8.html

Monday, February 14, 2005

PINSTRIPED CAMPAIGNER?

Having always been something of an outsider, it’s strange to be periodically sucked back into the fold. If there was one thing I really valued at Bryanston School, apart from the proximity to Hod and Hambledon Hills, it was the encouragement we got to make up our own minds, follow our own paths. One result: I refused to be confirmed, refused to join the Sea Cadets and, when the time came, also refused to join up for the Old Boys Society, whatever it was called.

But now I appear on the back page of Bryanston Newsletter 18 (Winter 2005), in a piece called ‘The Pinstriped Campaigner’, although it has yet to be posted on the school’s website (www.bryanston.co.uk/news/news_main.htm). And I have also done an essay for Bryanston: Reflections, due to be published in July, in celebration of the first 75 years of the school’s history.

BIOREGIONAL AND BEDZED

Interesting meeting this morning with BioRegional Development Group (www.bioregional.com), housed in the BedZED development south of London. BedZED was designed by Bill Dunster (www.zedfactory.com/home.html). Think I may see if can organise a SustainAbility team site visit. Certainly, the BedZED concept is a prime candidate for the ‘Showcase’ area of SustainAbility’s new website, due to launch shortly.

Saturday, February 12, 2005

HP COUP

One thing that happened while I was offline last week was the coup at HP (Hewlett-Packard), whose beautifully designed Palo Alto boardroom I found myself in late last year – though not when the board was present (see October 15). What stories those walls could now tell. CEO Carly Fiorina fell foul of what The Times today calls “a classic boardroom ambush” — and bade farewell to 142,000 employees, a $3.2 million salary and a company that many now see as having lost its way. A recent Fortune profile, which I read a few weeks back, must have left many readers wondering whether the writing wasn’t already on the wall.

My main reason for bringing the HP story up, however, is that as sustainability-style thinking moves into the mainstream, we have seen a growing number of SD- or CSR-‘friendly’ business leaders losing their jobs, perhaps most spectacularly Sir Philip Watts of Shell. To some degree such things are inevitable, given that they are part and parcel of mainstream business life, but Fiorina’s ouster sure as hell won’t help the wider corporate responsibility agenda in Bush’s America. And it will be interesting to see what happens to her ‘e-inclusion’ strategy (www.hp.com/e-inclusion/en/) now she has gone.

Friday, February 11, 2005

WE’RE BAAAAACK

After a week or so trying to get this blog back online, it seems to be up and running again – though the blogging toolbars have shrivelled on the Mac. If it’s not one thing … Not that the week has been wildly exciting, with much of it spent editing SustainAbility’s new website. But we did have an interesting workshop a few days back on corporate priority setting and Peter (Zollinger) stayed with us for a couple of days in the week – and, as usual, we watched a couple of the second series editions of The West Wing. Fabulous. And this evening a bunch of us — including Elaine — collapsed on the office sofas with glasses of sparkling wine and unravelled.

Saturday, February 05, 2005

CBI ERUPTS

Well, my intuition that some long-standing Davos supporters — and their ilk — would be upset about this year’s agenda is confirmed by the outspoken attack by CBI Director-General Sir Digby Jones. As the Davos event wound down, he apparently accused WEF of allowing the NGOs to “hijack” the agenda. “Too many sessions have been an excuse to beat up on business,” he is quoted as saying in Roberto Savio’s Other News. He argued that there should have been more on risk takers and wealth creators.

But what can be seen as the ‘hijacking’ of the WEF agenda can also be seen as an inevitable stage towards the time when a new set of entrepreneurs, investment bankers and venture capitalists start to drive new waves of creative destruction in the global economy. And in that context I had an interesting lunch yesterday with a couple of venture capitalists who want me to join up for a new venture fund in the area of sustainable technology. Given that I am keen that SustainAbility shifts a proportion of its effort into the area of new ventures, I’m taking the invitation seriously.

Friday, February 04, 2005

IDENTITY CORRECTION – THE YES MEN

The leading edge of activist continues to mutate. Hot on the heels of their spoof Dow Chemical BBC interview on the twentieth anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, The Yes Men (“activist-pranksters” Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno) are back with a film — which launches on 18 February (www.theyesmen.org). The focus of the film (www.theyesmenmovie.com) is on their hijacking of the World Trade Organization (WTO) website, or at least their launching of a website that mimics the WTO’s website — the same trick they pulled with Dow.

They call the process ‘identity correction’. “Unlike identity theft,” says Bonanno, “where a crimical uses your identity in order to steal something, we thought, ‘We’re going to target the biggest criminals and we’re going to steal their identity to make them more honest. And so we impersonate them to make them more honest.”

Thursday, February 03, 2005

MY SECOND HOME – BA

Yesterday, had lunch with top Microsoft people and a number of European movers and shakers. Late afternoon, after another Microsoft meeting (in a room with a view), I walked back to the Prague Hilton in driving, slushy snow.

Then this morning out to the airport, where it struck me that BA really is my second home. That said, the safety announcement was done at a blistering speed which even I, as an English-speaker, struggled to keep up with, added to which it was in a regional accent. Then customer questionnaires came around and, unusually, I took one and let BA have it with both barrels. Am I getting old and cantankerous? Then into office for meeting with some Japanese colleagues, following which I headed home – among other things – to plow through a mountain of cuttings that Elaine had produced while I was away.

Room with a darkish view (©JE)

My second home (©JE)

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

IT’S PAUL HAWKEN, BY A WHISKER

Back late from a Microsoft dinner in the Spanish Hall, Prague Castle, to find an e-mail from GlobeScan with the results of their latest survey of sustainability experts. One question in the survey had asked who was the best author on sustainable development, with no prompts on names. Of those named, Paul Hawken came top (22), I came second (21) and Amory Lovins third (20). Not sure the numbers mean that much, though they’re substantially higher than for the next cluster of names mentioned, but it’s nice to be in such company.

POST SAM, IT MUST BE PRAGUE

Arrived in Prague this morning for a Microsoft Government Leaders Forum. Last couple of days, post Davos, were spent in Zurich with Peter Zollinger and his family, including — yesterday — my first Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes advisory board meeting with Sustainable Asset Management (SAM: www.sam-group.com). Great session with the SAM team (Alex Barkawi, MD of SAM Indexes; Reto Ringger, SAM’s founder and CEO; and Christian Werner, SAM Head of Research), with the external folk being: Michelle Chan-Fishel (Program Manager, Green Investments Project, Friends of the Earth, USA), Bill McDonough (www.mbdc.com), John Prestbo (Editor, Down Jones Indexes) and Bjorn Stigson (www.wbcsd.org).

Odd feeling as Peter accompanied me to the station this morning: the snow had thawed and was re-freezing, so it was like — as Peter described it — walking on wet soap. A slithery start to the day, especially when dragging a heavy case on wheels. But then whisked through the VIP route at Prague airport, with the case following me on automatic. I could almost get used to this.

 

Sunday, January 30, 2005

DAVOS 05

Even before I arrived in Davos for the thirty-fifth World Economic Forum summit there was a sense that this year’s agenda would be different. “There is a strong feeling that everything on the surface looks pretty good, but something somewhere is not behaving itself underneath,” HSBC chief economist Stephen King had told the Financial Times. This, apparently, was to be his first summit and I have no idea what he made of it all, but it was my fourth and, like many I spoke to, I was stunned by the seismic shifts in the agenda.

No doubt HSBC had in mind issues like the sagging dollar and soaring deficits, and such issues certainly sent powerful tremors through the summit, as did the rise of China as an economic power. But an early warning of the wider tectonic processes at work came during a ‘Global Town Hall’ meeting, where some 700 leaders were asked to select six priority ‘tough issues’ (www.weforum.org). Many CEOs and company directors who had followed well-worn trails to Davos may have expected well worn issues to resurface, with perhaps something topical on how corporations can best respond to natural disasters. But what they got was almost as unexpected as the tidal waves on 26 December.

When the votes were counted, the top issues were: poverty (64%), equitable globalization (55%), climate change (51%), education and the Middle East (both scoring 44%) and global governance (43%). WEF founder Professor Klaus Schwab later stressed that social and environmental issues have been part of the Davos Forum’s agenda for decades, which is true, but the difference is that they are no longer confined to workshops in distant hotel basements. They are centre stage.

As President Chirac was followed by Prime Minister Blair and Blair by Chancellor Schroder, hope grew that a deeper set of political responses might now be emerging. It is clear that such leaders now recognize the need to address systemic issues of poverty, governance and climate change. The anti-globalization protestors may have been less in evidence, but their issues were ubiquitous, in the speeches of political, business and civil society luminaries. In an exit video ‘vox pop’ poll, indelicately, I even found myself saying that it had often seemed as if ‘the lunatics have taken over the asylum’.

Still, many still worry that it will be the usual problem of too little, too late. Sixty years after the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski wondered aloud how such horrors could have been allowed to happen. Some of us silently wondered whether by 2065 the world won’t be asking how a new set of horrors happened?

Al Gore, for example, shocked the final plenary with his dramatic wake-up call on climate change. And UK trade and industry secretary Patricia Hewitt recalled that the heat wave of 2003 led to 26,000 premature deaths in Europe and costs of around £13.5 billion.

But it remains to be seen what long-standing WEF supporters make of all this. Some may be taking comfort in a recent polemic in The Economist arguing that the corporate social responsibility agenda has gone too far, but a striking number of business people publicly and specifically refuted that line of thinking during the summit — indeed, even some Economist journalists present privately expressed dismay.

Shimon Peres on Middle East (©JE)

Al Gore on climate change (©JE)

Final lunch (©JE)

Alpine cooking (©JE)

Alpine music (©JE)

Coming down (©JE)

Monday, January 24, 2005

BLOOD AND GORE

Spent much of the day sketching out the program for our conference tour of Australia and New Zealand in May, plus heard that in addition the trip will now take in not only South Korea and Japan but also China.

In the evening, went across to Buck’s Club, Clifford Street, for a meeting of the 21st Century Trust (www.21stCenturyTrust.org). The Environment Foundation, which I chair (www.environmentfoundation.net), has decided to come in alongside the Trust to organise an annual series of consultations. The Foundation has been slowed down in recent years by a number of factors, but particularly by a multi-year legal battle we had to fight with the Charity Commissioners to establish sustainable developent as a legitimate charitable objective. We won, with the result that SD is now formally a charitable objective, but the distraction cost us dear.

Chris Patton, who chairs the Trust, spoke and described the convergence as akin to the Field of the Cloth of Gold, which struck me as a little OTT. I then Googled it when I got home (http://www.britainexpress.com/History/tudor/cloth-gold.htm), which left me slightly worried – since the 1520 event stretched the finances of the English and French treasuries to the limit – and didn’t move things forward politically very much, either. But the imagery worked well and the sentiment was appreciated!

On the way along Clifford Street to the meeting, I was hailed by a couple of friends from Generation Investment Management (http://www.generationim.com), who introduced me to Al Gore (Generation’s Chairman) and David Blood (its CEO). Blood used to head the asset management side of Goldman Sachs. Interesting, since I have just finished an interview of Gore for SustainAbility’s newsletter, Radar, which I did by e-mail.

And way overhead all these meetings, what looked like a full moon sailed serenly across the London sky.

Sunday, January 23, 2005

SEEING THE RUSHES

Gloriously sunny day, so we take a long walk in Richmond Park. The papers are beginning to play with the Davos agenda, which I’ll have to get my brain around next week. Apparently, the World Economic Forum (www.weforum.org) will be running some sort of voting scheme again to see what people think are the Big Issues, which will help as input to the new book. Apart from coverage of the film and pop celebrities who will be there, the main themes to date seem to be: something has gone wrong in the world and we don’t know what it is or how to fix it; the US is key (partly because they seem to be pushing their stick into all sorts of hornets’ nests without any very good idea of what to do next), but Bush and his new US Cabinet won’t be attending; and the Chinese will there, but they – like the Japanese before them – will be listening rather than saying very much.

Oh, and I know not to shoot into direct sunlight, but I have always been intrigued by the kaleidoscopic effects that result.

Shadows (©JE)

Dogs (©JE)

Rushes (©JE)

Friday, January 21, 2005

CAN – COMMUNITY ACTION NETWORK

By train to Waterloo, admiring in passing the chimneys on the old Barnes station building, for fascinating morning with three CAN people: James Alexander (Managing Director), Jeremy Raphaely (Director of Social Enterprise Development) and Owen Jarvis (Director of Social Franchising). They support social entrepreneurs in the UK. Just upstream of HMS Belfast, we met in the Mezzanine area of the 1 London Bridge complex, where CAN estimate they save the cluster of NGOs and charities they house some £230,000 a year. Had heard of CAN over the years, without ever quite being able to pull the jigsaw puzzle together. Now it’s much clearer (www.can-online.org.uk) – and I’m impressed. Particularly liked the sound of their ‘Beanstalk’ programme, designed to help social entrepreneurs grow and replicate through franchising.

Barnes station (©JE)

HMS Belfast (©JE)

Thursday, January 20, 2005

COLLAPSE AT ROYAL SOCIETY

Out into the darkness after Diamond’s brilliance (©JE)

Elaine, Kavita (Prakash-Mani), Tell (Muenzing) and I make our way across to the Royal Society to hear Jared Diamond speaking about his new book, Collapse – which explores the question why societies collapse. One thing that sticks in my mind is the insult hurled by Easter Islanders at each other as their society spiralled down into the dark night of war and cannibalism: “The flesh of your mother sticks between my teeth.” Reminds me of the book I was reading today on my way to Happy Computers – Rats: A Year With New York’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants, by Robert Sullivan. Rats are a mirror species to our own. When squeezed, they too resort to cannibalism. But Diamond describes himself as a “cautious optimist.”

I had recommended Collapse as required reading to people taking part in a scenarios project a few weeks back, sight unseen, simply on the basis of reviews I had read – and my appreciation of Diamond’s earlier books, The Third Chimpanzee and Guns, Germs and Steel, both excellent. This evening confirmed the prejudices that had led me to do so.

Interested in kowning more? Try http://149.142.237.180/faculty/diamond.htm

HAPPY

Since SustainAbility has been having hiccups with its IT as we switched to new servers in recent days, I worked at home on my Mac before leaving for my meeting with Henry Stewart of IT training company Happy Computers (www.happy.co.uk). Getting off the District Line Tube at Aldgate East, I walked further east – and completely overshot Adler Street, where the Happy empire is based. As a result, I got to see a part of London which I haven’t seen in years – and which could easily be Bangladesh, with a heady interlacing of faces from other parts of the Muslim world.

Happy founder Henry Stewart had taken me to task on what he thought I had said at a Business in the Community conference last year. We had sorted that out, but agreed to meet. And it was astounding how much we proved to have in common. The Happy group may be around twice SustainAbility’s size, but the values and approaches overlap in many areas. The two organisations were founded around the same time. Like us, they are a social enterprise (though neither organisation describes itself as such), highly democratic, but privately held. And, like us, they publish most of their ‘crown jewels’, their training manuals, rather than protecting them as intellectual property. The idea being that if you give today you will receive tomorrow.

Happy Computers banner, with Erotic Gherkin in background (©JE)

Henry Stewart (©JE)

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

POLITICS

As I walked through Docklands today, with a blustery, cold wind coming up off the Thames, I was thinking that we – both SustainAbility and I – will need to spend more time on the political dimensions of the issues we are trying to tackle. That’s in part because of the current media coverage of the Corner House (www.thecornerhouse.org.uk) legal challenge to the Department of Trade & Industry and, specifically, the alterations made to the ECGD (www.ecgd.gov.uk) rules on bribery and corruption. (And I was headed across to ECGD’s HQ at the time.) But it’s also a sense that as these great issues thrust into the mainstream, as we are now seeing with both climate change in US and EU politics and with human rights concerns (in addition to all the other concerns) in Iraq, the political battles will become increasingly urgent and it may well prove progressively harder to maintain a neutral, objective stance.

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

ZHAO ZIYANG

An extraordinary and very brave man, Zhao Ziyang is probably best remembered for his visit to the protesting students in Tiananmen Square on May 19 1989. “I came too late. I came too late,” he told the doomed students, in distress and close to tears. At the time, he headed China’s Communist Party.

What is interesting reading the Financial Times obituary today, though, is just how long Zhao had been out of synch with what passed for Communist thought. While Mao whipped himself up into a frenzy of enthusiasm for a “new society” based on rural communes, Zhao focused on trying to improve agricultural yields. Falling foul of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Zhao was toppled by the Red Guards and paraded in a dunce’s cap, but later bounced back into power. But 1989 marked the end of his public career: he had effectively been under house arrest ever since. But, as the FT notes, it could have been worse. While Zhao was even allowed the occasional round of golf, in 1969 former president Liu Shaoqi was allowed to die in prison of untreated ailments.

Saturday, January 15, 2005

DIGESTING THE IMPLICATIONS OF A DIM SUN

Several people in recent days – including Elaine – had told me what an impact a BBC 2 Horizon program had had on the way they saw the threat of global warming. Tonight she made me watch a repeat, which I found fascinating. The focus initially was on the process of ‘global dimming’, with particular pollution from around the world creating a haze which reflects sunlight back into space, cooling the Earth’s surface (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4171591.stm).

The impact of the haze was graphically demonstrated after the 9/11 attacks, when US airlines were grounded for several days. As the contrails faded, ground temperatures leapt an average of around 1 degree, which was way beyond what the scientists had expected. Factor in other forms of haze and the cooling effect could involve as much as 10% reduction in incoming sunlight. If so, most current climate change models are probably signficantly under-estimating global warming.

One weird thing about the progam: there were several sequences when rain or melting ice created waterscapes which were highly reminiscent of last night’s dream (see previous entry).

DREAMING OF A FECUND UNIVERSE

Section of Japanese Bridge at Giverny by Monet

They say the brain’s a pattern recognition organ, but today mine has been on something like speed. Talking to Elaine as we woke up this morning, I remembered a deeply moving dream I had last night. (Which in itself was slightly odd, given that I had been talking to someone at Shell yesterday who said he hadn’t dreamed, or remembered dreaming, for 15 years.)

In the same way that some forms of software cross-connect with everything on your computer once uploaded, this dream has been cross-connecting with just about everything that passes though my mind today, though on the face of it this was a pretty simple thing.

The dream?

I was in conversation with an unknown person beside an expanse of water covered, at least close to, by water lilies. When I looked down, the nearest lilies and water were painted, but exquisitely so you could hardly tell that they were not real. But then the further out one looked, the more the landscape seemed totally natural. Next, however, I noticed that the water between the lily leaves, which at first glance moved and reflected just like normal water, was in fact composed of a profusion of mini ripple systems, as though a constant fine rain was falling on the surface. And as I continued to observe, it became clear that these ripple systems were being generated mathematically, not just mathematically describable, as if the whole thing was being dreamed by a silicon brain or created by some incredibly powerful computer. And then the ripples decomposed into spirals, suggesting deeper worlds.

And that was it, except that then the cross-connections began as I talked to Elaine and Gaia (and her friend Becky, who is staying with us) over breakfast, and read today’s stack of newspapers.

First, there was the news of the extraordinary success of the Cassini spacecraft and of the Huygens probe it carried in landing on Titan, the giant moon of Saturn. The best illustrations were on the front page of The Independent, which I had tried to cancel last week but which Elaine had insisted on keeping. The visual mindstorm that was already taking over parts of my brain was now cross-threaded with the series of sweeping arcs, trajectories, fly-bys and orbitings that brought the cameras across two billion miles in seven years, from Cassini’s launch in October 1997 (when, incidentally, SustainAbility had agreed to work with Shell after two years of saying no) to yesterday’s landing.

No wonder that the NASA and ESA scientists are elated, believing that the images that have been streaming back give us some idea of what the primitive earth would have been like.

After breakfast, I tracked down the book on Monet I had bought Elaine some years ago, but never really read: Monet by Himself, edited by Richard Kendall. Samples of a couple of his paintings are dropped in above. But as I looked at the images, the droplets continued to play across that dream surface, reminding me of someone yesterday who had brought spirals into a conversation, but even more of something I read earlier in the week about the ‘fecund universe’ theory, if I remember right. The notion being that new galaxies are constantly forming and, something I think I also read, that even entire universes may also be continually forming, on the other side of black holes, and spooling out into who knows where.

The dream image that on first glance had seemed static, like a landscape caught in ‘Golden Pond’ amber, and when I think of it hugely reminiscent of a painting my grandmother Isabel Coaker had in her flats in Pont Street and Lennox Gardens in the 1970s, was in fact sizzling with unseen creation, a roiling wealth of new opportunities. Perhaps, these are the micro-worlds, potential new universes, that the social entrepreneurs that are the subject of the new book I’m just beginning to write are helping lead me into?

Whatever, beneath calm surfaces great energies are often quietly working. Victor Mallet writes in today’s Financial Times of how those at sea experienced the Indian ocean tsunamis. Many died, but some boats sailed across the seas all oblivious. “We had two boats sail through the tsunami,” Mallet quotes one charter company executive as saying. “There was death and destruction on either side of them and they barely noticed the wave. They felt it might have been a boat wake.”

Whatever has been driving it, the process of cross-linking continued apace as I continued reading through the papers. The Times, for example, which I sometimes describe as a comic now that it has gone tabloid, opened out into a seemingly endless series of supplements, each nested within another. So we started with things like ‘Money’ and ‘Weekend Review’, moving on through ‘Travel’ through to ‘The Eye’ and ‘Body & Soul’. It was very much like a series of nested universes, flaring or flowering before me.

Then there were the climate change stories, with The Guardian reporting that bears in Russia that are meant to hibernate until March are out and about already. Behind the day-to-day reality we have grown comfortable with, stupendous changes are now taking place, though currently it’s a bit like catching sight of them in peripheral vision, like those spirals between the lily leaves. The Times, alongside a photo of what it says is a Muscovite ice sculpture exhibition melting, says that Moscow is having its warmest January since records began.

And while on the subject of records, just as I was wondering whether I needed an even stronger cup of coffee, I came across obituaries in both The Times and The Independent on Spencer Dryden, drummer during their glory days with Jefferson Airplane (www.jeffersonairplane.com). They were one of my favourite bands during the late Sixties, indeed I remember racing out to get their first album, Surrealistic Pillow, when it first appeared, and their song White Rabbit features in my Top 16 tracks, listed elsewhere on this site.

Having always been a sucker for Ravel’s Bolero, I was seized by Adam Sweeting’s throwaway line in The Guardian‘s obituary that Dryden, originally a jazz drummer, had given the song a bolero beat. I mentioned that to Gaia, who promptly exactly reproduced that insistent, druggy beat, all spiralling out to Grace Slick’s rendering of the story of Lewis Carroll’s Alice and her adventures underground.

And that put me even further in mind of those distant, heady days of psychedelia and the underground politics of the Sixties. Instead of reading magazines like Wired or Fast Company, as I do today, I then subscribed to Rolling Stone and Ramparts, the New Left organ of folk like Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).

Weirdly, and these things do happen, my Mac, which has been playing a succession of blues tracks I bought last week after seeing several of the unbelievably good Blues series pulled together by Martin Scorsese for PBS (wwwthebluesonline.com), and particularly the Wim Wenders film on Blind Willie Johnson, Skip James and JB Lenoir, is just now playing Cassandra Wilson’s version of Lenoir’s Vietnam Blues. And what should I be reading this week but Ho Chin Minh: A Life, by William J. Duiker, though whether I manage to make it to the end of this particular Ho Chi Minh trail, reading every word of the 700-page tome, remains to be seen.

Oh, and with Lou Reed’s laconic, rippling, thumping version of Skip James Look Down the Road now playing, it strikes me that this day isn’t yet even half way through.

Friday, January 14, 2005

GERALD LEACH: GENTLE GIANT

It’s an interesting reflection of how long the environmental and sustainable development movements have been a-building that these days I quite often turn to the obituary pages to find news of a colleague or acquaintance in the field who has just died. This time, in The Times, it’s Gerald Leach, whose writing I read avidly when he was at The Observer, where he helped break the Limits to Growth story, and who I later was to meet a number of times, mainly at parties at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), which he later joined.

I’m six foot, but my memory of him is as a gentle giant, stooping to maintain contact with lesser (or do I mean shorter?) mortals. His work on low energy strategies was hugely influential in shaping my thinking on work I did as part of the UK Conservation and Development Strategy, published in 1983, and in the early days of Environmental Data Services (ENDS), where I was editor from 1978 and then managing director until 1983.

A godfather, really, of sustainable development.

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

BITC AS ‘FIG LEAF’

One of the things we have long encouraged companies to do is to pressure industry associations they are part of to pursue policies aligned with the corporate responsibility and sustainable development priorities the relevant companies have adopted. In the same spirit, we have also encouraged industry associations to drop member companies that do not meet their own (often dilute) CR and SD requirements. In this context it’s very interesting to see today’s Financial Times, whose front page reports that Suffolk brewers Adnams – which won the first “small company of the year award” from Business in the Community in 2003 – has resigned from BITC.

The company’s explanation? Its chairman, Simon Loftus, told the FT that BITC was being used as a “PR figleaf” by some member companies – and that it is too soft on irresponsible members. Whatever the facts of the matter, and I have worked with BITC and its affliated Business in the Environment over many years, I hope (but don’t expect) that more companies will follow Adnams’ lead with bodies like the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and the International Chamber of Commerce).

Friday, January 07, 2005

(S)CARE IN THE COMMUNITY

Got a better idea of what care in the community can mean today. As I was coming back from the Soho Curzon, where Elaine, Gaia and I had seen the fabulous ‘House of Flying Daggers’, I turned into our road, on my own, to see a well-built young man attacking cars as he came towards me. “Who killed John Lennon?” he demanded, before shouting “I did” and launching into me, telling me about Hitler as he did so. Somewhat hampered by a large bag I was carrying, I managed to extricate myself, then followed him while dialling 999.

It turns out they put you in a holding queue while they try to get through to Scotland Yard, no less. Meanwhile our friend smashes various cars, attacks another – elderly – man beating him to the ground and dislocating his shoulder, and so forth. Determined not to let him get away I follow him, through snickets, around corners, calling 999 three times to let the police know where he is headed – and eventually stopping two police cars when they finally arrived to say he’d taken off in a completely different direction. In the end, feeling I had done enough and was tempting fate, I headed home, meeting Elaine coming to look for me on the way, only to find another police car near the scene of the attacks, which I also stopped. Then a bunch of neighbours came out to complain that their cars had been damaged.

Spent this evening in Roehampton and then Kingston Hospitals, with a wind so violent as Gaia and I made our way through the endless, bleak maze of Kingston Hospital that it ripped my glasses from my face and sending them spinning through a wire fence. Luckily, Gaia had a torch, so eventually we found them in the dark. Only a bit of rib damage, whereas with the other man you could see the dislocation – and yet, even so, it took the hospitals ages to get to treating him. This evening two policemen come around to tell us what happened: they caught the man. Well, I knew that, having heard them reporting in over one of their female colleagues’ wireless. “He’s got some mental issues,” they said through the static. Whatever, thank heavens for cell phones – and thank heavens, too, for the poor people who struggle to keep our ailing health care system wobbling along on its gangrenous legs.

Monday, January 03, 2005

LONDON WETLAND CENTRE

Much of the day spent working through notebooks from the interviews I did with social entrepreneurs – many of them with Pamela Hartigan of the Schwab Foundation – at last year’s World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. Am feeding it all into the structure of the new book Pamela and I are writing, which is hugely energising.

Then, this afternoon, Elaine and I walk across to the London Wetland Centre, run by the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (www.wwt.org.uk). This is a 105-acre wetland landscape in the heart of Barnes, with 30 different habitats, 170 wild bird species recorded, plus more than 300 butterflies and moths – and 20 dragon and damselflies. When we arrived in Barnes, 30 years ago, this area was covered by four huge water reservoirs. It’s been a while since we last walked across, but – drab weather or not – it’s a staggeringly beautiful memorial to Sir Peter Scott who conceived both the Trust and the Centre. His statue, saluted (I like to think) by a swan, welcomes visitors to the Centre.

Sir Peter Scott saluted by swan (©JE)

Keeping a weather eye on proceedings (©JE)

Sunday, January 02, 2005

THE TIDE IS OUT

Elaine and I took a delightful walk around Barnes during most people’s lunchtime, across the Common to the old cemetery where old Bruce Ismay of White Star Line and Titanic infamy is buried (many years ago, in Pembrokeshire, we knew one of the Ismays who, when she wasn’t looking after her horses was grinding lenses for her telescope), then around to the Thames – where the tide was spectacularly out. Interesting to read in the papers how few people knew that a rapidly retreating tide is a tsunami precursor.

Barnes Pond (©JE)

Elaine 1 (©JE)

Elaine 2 (©JE)

Barnes Cemetery 1 (©JE)

Barnes Cemetery 2 (©JE)

The Thames towards Hammersmith (©JE)

Elaine shoots the Thames (©JE)

Barnes Bridge (©JE)

 

Thursday, December 30, 2004

TSUNAMIS AND BUSINESS

The scale of the disasters caused by the Indian Ocean tsunamis was put into context by Raja Jarrah of Care International today, writing in The Times. For the aid agencies, he said, dealing with the consequences “is like dealing with five or six simultaneous disasters, each of which would make major news in its own right. It is as if the Goma volcano, the Zimbabwe famine, the Bam earthquake and Hurricane Mitch had happened on the same day.”

Although much of the media attention is inevitably focusing on the inadquacies of most government responses, and on the role of aid agencies and the UN, Robert Davies of the International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF) has sent out a brief on the potential role of business, which is well worth reading. Click on the link below:

http://johnelkington.com/wp-content/uploads/2004/12/TsunamiIBLFbrief.pdf

Wednesday, December 29, 2004

THE HILL HOUSE ‘GHOST’

Arrived yesterday in Little Rissington, to see my parents, with Elaine, Gaia and Hania. As we dropped down towards Burford, gateway to the Cotswolds, it was wonderful to see the church spire in the distance and brilliant white swans in the water meadows. Burford was jammed, but once we were over the old woolpack bridge, we were back in the clear.

As we had driven west from London, we had seen a fair number of foxes dead on the road: hope they’re not taking additional risks with the traffic because the banning of fox hunts has robbed them of life’s excitements? A huge hunt pours through Little Rissington today, December 29, all in blacks and greys. The sheer spectacle from our kitchen window is a wonder to behold. But I’m conflicted on hunting. Always disagreed with Julia Hailes on the issue when we were writing books together. She’s pro, I’m broadly anti. Not because I don’t like tradition and not because I think foxes should be sacrosanct – they can look after themselves perfectly well – but because of the sheer arrogance of the hunting fraternity when we have collided with them in the countryside over the decades. With a few, honourable exceptions, the experience has tended to surface emotions that track back at least to the time of the Saxons and Normans.

Spent yesterday afternoon with friends in Icomb, then early part of this afternoon going through old family photograph albums compiled over decades by my father, Tim. Given that I also have kept fairly extensive photo albums over the decades, I often wonder to what extent one’s memories would be different if such photos didn’t exist. And now that digital photography gives one editing powers unknown even to the most sophisticated of Stalin’s henchmen, I also wonder how real the pasts we look back at a few decades from now will be?

Elaine saw the Hill House ‘ghost’ again last night. In the past, she has seen what she described as very like ball lightning hanging in the air in one of the attic bedrooms. This time we were sleeping on a different floor, a part of the house where the ghost is not meant to penetrate. Nonetheless, Elaine awoke to a clash of cymbals, very much like – she said – the fanfare when a magician produces the rabbit out of a hat, and the bedroom was full of sparks, crackling as they fell slowly towards the floor.

Searching the Net, I came across a site devoted to ball lightning – and the descriptions seemed fairly close to what Elaine has described over the years. Makes me wonder whether the house – one end of which, the end most affected by the ‘ghost’, is several hundred years old – is sited or wired in a way that generates unusual phenomena?

Fireball at Salagnes, in W. deFonveille, Thunder and Lightning, 1868, from www.ernmphotography.com/Pages/Ball_Lightning

Tuesday, December 28, 2004

UKRAINIAN SCHADENFREUDE

It’s amazing how the map and experience of ‘Europe’ are reordering themselves. In the wake of the accession of the ten new EU member states, the news comes in today that Viktor Yushchenko – Ukraine’s pro-western opposition leader – has won the rerun presidential elections, by 52% to 44%. With the dioxin poisoning of Yuschenko, we have come to expect a degree of skulduggery, and today’s news doesn’t disappoint: Ukraine’s Transport Minister has been found dead at his dacha, with a gun nearby.

No doubt much unsavouriness is going to come out in the wash, but at the same time that parts of the Indian Ocean were being seismically jolted into 2005, the Ukraine has been jolted sharply towards the new Europe. I just hope that we have the political vision, the wisdom, to make sense of and manage this massively expanded sphere of influence.

An excellent column in yesterday’s Financial Times by Viktor Yushchenko, talking about the ‘Orange Revolution’ by which, he argues, the country has “put a definitive end to its post-Soviet period. By rejecting managed democracy, Ukraine has affirmed itself as a free European country that shares the political values of modern democratic states.” It remains to be seen, however, how people in the east of the country react. Some still fear that they may try to secede.

Meanwhile, I confess, there’s a certain Schadenfreude to be enjoyed in seeing the erstwhile Prime Minister, Viktor Yanukovych, who presided over the massively corrupted first-round election, saying that he will appeal to the country’s Supreme Court about corruption this time around. Maybe he’s angling to win a degree of immunity for what went before?

Monday, December 27, 2004

KANDAHAR

Having been warned against it – “no joy” – I sat down this afternoon to watch the film Kandahar, by Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Absolutely brilliant.

True, the plot is spare: Nafas, a young Afghan woman now living in Canada, tries to reach Kandahar from Iran to save her sister, injured by a land mine, whose letter had said she would commit suicide during the last solar eclipse of the millennium. But, despite the bleakness of the story and the stark, washed-out landscapes in which most people seem to stagger around on crutches, the film had me sitting breathless at times. (Nafas, I read, means ‘Respiration’, the notion being that as a Canadian she is not suffocated by the burka as Afghan women have been, though she has to adopt one to find her way into Afghanistan.)

The lead role is played by Nelofer Pazira, 28, whose family fled Afghanistan in 1989 and now lives in Canada. She had originally contacted Makhmalbaf to ask him to film a journey she planned to make to rescue a friend in very similar circumstances. A radio and TV journalist, she was unable to persuade Makhmalbaf first time around, but later he suggested a fictionalised version of the story. Bilingual, she talks to refugees in the Afghan variant of Farsi, using English when she speaks into a tape recorder to record her journey and impressions.

Makhmalbaf ends the film on a profound downbeat. And he has been pessimistic about any impact the film might have: “I don’t believe,” he says, “that the little flame of knowledge kindled by a report or a film can illuminate the deep ocean of human ignorance.” Well, maybe, but it’s one of the most moving I have seen. His website (www.makhmalbaf.com/movies.asp?m=10) gives some sense of the wonderful imagery.

Some critics have protested the use of gloriously coloured burkas to make the film easier on the eye, though somewhere on his website someone notes that Afghan women who cannot compete in terms of their looks do so via their raiment. Whatever, some the clothes are staggeringly beautiful – as are many of the Afghan faces, which helps bring the tragedy home. And the scenes of artificial legs being parachuted into the desert landscape, ahead of a surging field of crippled farmers and ex-soldiers chasing the aerial booty on their rough crutches, is an unforgettable moment of cinema.

© Mohsen Makhmalbaf

FOX, FULL MOON, FALLING OVER

Wonderful moment last night, after we we returned from Hampstead – where we had had a glorious lunch with Kavita Prakash-Mani, her husband Kartik, Nick Robinson and his partner Fiona. As we left, the full Moon was sailing across the dark sky, a serene moment in the wake of the terrible news of the earthquake off Indonesia. As we shut down the house to go to bed, the Moon was almost directly overhead and a dog fox was howling a few gardens away, like a coyote.

Was also in the process of finishing off The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki – a fantastic book. But there are moments that remind us that we are ultimately individuals, like that howling fox who – as Elaine noted – shares our space but lives in a very different world.

This morning, as I was reading the papers, and in the midst of another in the strean of blue-skied mornings, Tom Delfgaauw (one of SustainAbility’s two non-executive directors) called with a progress report on his accident outside St Paul’s Cathedral just before Christmas. He damaged both legs, it turns out, and will be bed-bound for a while.

The story struck home for a number of reasons, one of which was sympathy felt because of the much smaller accident I had suffered in Italy a few months back, when I tore a ligament. The problem was caused by tripping on the smallest of kerbs. Still hurts, although Elaine insisted a few days back that I apply some weird (Acu-med) plasters containing zinc and copper in a magnetic field. It’s meant to work with the skin’s moisture to create small pulses and stimulate the body’s natural mechanisms. And the weirdest thing? It seems to be working.

Friday, December 24, 2004

FT ON OLD FOES

Today’s Financial Times includes a substantial article by Alison Maitland on the new ways in which business and NGOs are working together, in which I am fairly extensively quoted (http://news.ft.com/cms/s/3ebf3b36-5551-11d9-9974-00000e2511c8.html).

Thursday, December 23, 2004

RECONNECTED

Pretty much a month after disconnecting me, BT has finally reconnected the broadband line this afternoon – though not without endless to-ings and fro-ings today. I simply cannot imagine a future in which consumers put up with this sort of service. No doubt the offshoring process will lead to strong IT providers in countries like India and China – and then God help the old purveyors in the once-industralised world. When IT services can be connected and delivered remotely, BT risks being consigned to some museum rather like the local chamber of horrors they used to have in Bourton-on-the-Water, displaying double-headed piglets and the like.

Monday, December 20, 2004

PEOPLE TREE

Safia Minney of People Tree and Matt Loose of SustainAbility (©JE)

Busy day, trying to get our latest proposal for a research program out to the wider team and others who will work on it. But the day started with a session with Safia Minney of People Tree (http//:www.peopletree.co.uk), the fair trade fashion house. Fascinating – and, as ever, those who took part from the SustainAbility team were bowled over by the sheer energy. Am gearing up to start work on the social entrepreneurs book over the Christmas break, with a large bundle of documentation just courriered in from the Schwab Foundation (http://www.schwabfound.org) to digest over the next couple of weeks.

Sunday, December 19, 2004

RICHMOND PARK

Magical walk through Richmond Park, with Elaine and great herds of deer, the intense winter sun slanting off the ponds between the trees.

Between the trees(©JE)

Two deer crossing (©JE)

Many deer approaching (©JE)

Branches in the Secret Pond (©JE)

Fungus on branch in Secret Pond (©JE)

Crow in blasted tree(©JE)

Saturday, December 18, 2004

60 YEARS ON: A PHOTO IN THE TIMES

My photo of Tim’s photo in The Times (©JE)

Odd. A few days back, on 13 December, I cut an obituary from The Times on Group Captain Frank Carey. Partly influenced by the powerful photo of Carey with a Spitfire in India, partly by the extraordinary story of the man’s life. Found another obituary in today’s Independent, which I also cut. Then, quite unrelated, rang my parents this morning, and discovered that the photo in The Times had been taken by Tim, my father, in August 1944.

Turns out that Tim knew Carey quite well, indeed they were both in the Royal West Sussex Hospital a few beds apart – after being shot down in August 1940. Then, a few years later, Carey appointed Tim to command one of his units when they were both in India, flying against the Japanese.

Having spotted that the photo was his, Tim e-mailed The Times to note the fact. They replied to say that they were sending the royalty cheque!

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

CHURCHILL AND THE ICY THUMB’S UP

Trafalgar Square after HSBC meeting (©JE)

Leaving an HSBC senior executive session late this morning, held at the St Martin’s Lane Hotel, I walked back to the Piccadilly Line via Trafalgar Square. The Square, including the lions, had been sprayed with artificial snow and there was also a large hand carved out of ice. In the background a large screen showed various characters from British history, from Florence Nightingale to Winston Churchill. Part impressive, part tacky. But I had dinner with the HSBC people last night at The National Gallery, and was impressed as I arrived to see what a difference the closure of the northern side of the Square to traffic has made to the quality of the visitor experience.

Monday, December 13, 2004

ODE TO JOY AND BROADBAND

Ah, the joys of IT! The BT engineer today reconnected the lines my Mac uses from home, three weeks after BT first cut them off. Now, apparently, all I have to do is wait seven working days for the broadband connection to be restarted. Until that happens, I can’t post images to the site. Amazing how dependent one becomes on particular technologies – and over a surprisingly short time. But my exposure in recent weeks to what passes for customer service in the telecommunications world persuades me that the market must be wide open for rival suppliers who use state-of-the-art technology to provide a human and humane experience for the customer.

WE’RE ALL LOOKING YOUNGER

During the SustainAbility team away-day(s) (©JE)

Someone commented this morning that the SustainAbility team is looking younger this week, probably because the tempo has slowed and people aren’t quite so hung over. Last week was absolutely frenetic: SustainAbility’s Swiss, UK and US teams convened for most of the week to review the past year and look forward. Little if any of this will be caught on our current website, because we are in the process of blowing up the old one and starting again from the ground up. Hope is that the new www.sustainability.com site will launch late in January.

Overall, though, 2004 has been an excellent year, the team is in much better fettle than it was a year ago, and even I find the energy and enthusiasm with which we plan to approach 2005 infectious!

This afternoon, while most of the team were off seeing Local Hero in a hired mini-cinema, I was in the SustainAbility offices with Pamela Hartigan of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship (www.schwabfound.org), with whom I’m planning a new book on social entrepreneurs, and Gaia (Elkington), who is helping with research and editing. Wonderfully productive session. Am really looking forward to getting stuck in.

Then we join the rest of the team for an evening out at a Middle Eastern restaurant close by Bond Street. Our tables turn out to be in a couple of vaulted ‘caves’, which bombard the more acoustically sensitive among us with noise levels that would not only breach industrial health and safety standards but also, I suspect, human rights standards on what constitutes wilful torture. Have always had bat-like hearing in the higher frequencies, which makes such environments particularly unpleasant. Described it as the Seventh Circle of Hell, but without being able to remember what happens in all the different circles …

Others enjoyed it, however, and many went clubbing afterwards, which makes me realise just how old I am!

Sunday, December 12, 2004

KILLER ANGELS

Among other things, am reading Michael Shaara’s outstanding book The Killer Angels, an account of the Battle of Gettysburg. Have read a huge amount of military history, but can’t remember when a book grabbed me in this way. It was a gift from (Professor) Jim Salzman, a member of SustainAbility’s Council who stayed with us last week – though I think it was also recommended to me very strongly some years back by another American friend, Peter Kinder of KLD.

Saturday, December 04, 2004

APPETITES FOR THIEVERY

And BT still have me cut off. The newspapers are full of the Bhopal hoax and of the much happier news (though we’ll see where it all ends up) that Ukraine’s Supreme Court has overturned the energetically disputed election result, opening the way for an electoral re-run. The Guardian magazine carries a series of photos of dumped Christmas trees in various states of decay in a range or rural and urban landscapes, taken by Martin Burton, who came into the office yesterday to shoot me for a piece to appear in The Director.

Reading an extraordinary book at the moment: Mourid Barghouti’s I Saw Ramallah, translated by Ahdaf Soueif (Bloomsbury, 2004). An extraordinarily engaging account of what it is like to be a displaced Palestinian. The book is full of the most unusual poetic images, triggering all sorts of memories. For example, Barghouti quotes one of his own poems, Qasidat al-Shahawat (‘Poem of Appetites’).

An appetite for the thievery of the child within us,
Slipping through the miserliness of the old woman whose face
Was like biscuit dampened with water,
To steal the almonds from her field.
Our pleasure is that she should not see us.
And more pleasure, should she see us running away.
And more pleasure yet
If her cane catches one of us
And whips him.

Barghouti manages to make the Palestinian plight abundantly clear, but does so in a tremendously powerful way by being balanced at times when most of us would be tempted to rail endlessly at the forces of the ‘Occupation’. He also establishes a profound emotional connection between his world and those of his readers, or at least this one.

The image that came to mind when reading his story of the almonds was from when I was perhaps 11 or 12. We sometimes went ‘scrumping’ for apples in local orchards, but in this case were crossing a (private) bridge at the foot of the steeply sloping garden of the Le Marchant family. One of the most impressive Le Marchants, who we only knew as Miss Le Marchant, appeared like a black-clad Disney cartoon figure and raced down the lawn, she must have been in her sixties or seventies, but she set about the leader of our group with her walking stick. He fought back with his own cane, and the duel swayed back and forth for what seemed ages but was probably only a few seconds. Yes, I feel a degree of guilt, but there was something mythic about the moment and I wonder whether even Miss Le Marchant didn’t find her ancient blood somewhat stirred.

Friday, December 03, 2004

THE YES MEN

Amazing day, though BT still has me cut off from broadband, so can’t actually post blogs. Unexpectedly, not least because he was meant to be on a later plane – pass (Professor) Jim Salzman, a member of our Council, in Hammersmith station as I rush for the Tube. He’s inbound from US and headed for Barnes, where he’s staying with us. I have five or six meetings today and am slightly late for the first, though in the event I get there on time.

One interview I do during the day is interrupted by a mad rush to sort out what our position is on the unbelievable spoof the Yes Men have just pulled on BBC World, which runs an interview with someone they imagine to be a spokesman for Dow Chemical, but who turns out to be a complete Trojan Horse.

The company’s share price fell in the US and Europe once it was known that the ‘spokesman’, Jude Finisterra, had promised that Union Carbide would be liquidated and a further $12 billion paid to victims of the Bhopal disaster and medical help given to up to 120,000 people affected by the gas leaks. It’s astounding that the BBC didn’t pick up the blazingly clear warning signs, including Finisterra saying that Dow would be pressuring the US Government to extradite Warren Anderson, Union Carbide’s head at the time of the disaster, to India to stand trial. The very idea!

Though we didn’t approve of what was also a pretty cruel hoax on the victims, the bogus interview is further confirmation of the main thesis in Geoff Lye’s report on liability: that companies will increasingly find themselves not only to tort and class actions in the law courts but also to trial in the ‘court of public opinion’.

Thursday, December 02, 2004

‘UFO’ IN ANTWERP

Still cut off by BT. Just back from Antwerp, which is splattered with construction projects, as if preparing for something on the scale of an Olympics. (Had been giving an evening presentation yesterday for Akzo Nobel.) Then, at the end of a wide avenue, the shining metalscape of the new Palace of Justice, a mix of Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum on Bilbao and a crown-of-thorns starfish. Astonishing, totally out of character with the surrounds, a bit like a Spielberg rendering of a UFO landed in the Late Middle Ages. Taxi driver said the building had been HUGELY controversial. Maybe, I comforted, people would love it in 50 years. 100, he said.

Given a box of chocolates last night, in fact, what turns out to be a box of hands, in white, milk and dark chocolate. According to legend, the accompanying note said, the name of the city of Antwerp originates in the story of the giant Druoon Antigoon, who used to levy a heavy toll on traffic along the river Scheldt. If a skipper refused to pay the toll, the giant would chop off one of his hands and throw it in the river. Then a Roman centurion, Silvius Brabo, killed the giant, cut off his hands and threw them in the Scheldt. (So hand-werpen, where werpen apparently means ‘to throw’.)

Geoff was on the BBC’s Today programme this morning, with his new report, The Changing Landscape of Liability, published yesterday. One of the most political projects we have yet done, with push-back both from Dow Chemical and from people representing the victims of the Bhopal disaster during the course of the project, but Geoff was remarkably patient in ensuring all voices were properly represented. The conclusions, though, are not encouraging for companies like Dow. The report is downloadable free at: www.sustainability.com

 

Tuesday, November 30, 2004

FROM PARIS TO PYGMIES

Still cut off by BT. Am in Paris with Nick Robinson for the French launch of Risk & Opportunity, working alongside Utopies. Unbelievable morning sunshine glittering off the gilded domes of the city, particularly the Musee de lArmee, which is just around the corner from the Ministry where our launch was held – and blazing from buildings and columns as the taxi flashes across the Place de la Concorde.

Take the Eurostar back to London, where I am due to take part in a multistakeholder event at the Department of Trade & Industry, hosted by CSR Minister Nigel Griffiths. Am part of a panel with Nigel, Sara Parkin of Forum for the Future and Ian Russell, chief executive of ScottishPower.

Then chair the discussion session, at the end of which I spot Bob Worcester of MORI in the audience and invite him to take my slot on the podium to do a summing up. He does wonderfully well and, though some thought it was a set-up, it was really on of those spur-of-the-moment jollities. Explain to the audience that one of my New Years Resolutions is to let others do the work, wherever possible, though there was serious intent: the event was a bit too stage managed for a real stakeholder dialogue, so I was trying to pull different voices into the conversation.

Next, walk across Westminster Bridge, trundling my bags, to the Shell Centre for the first (and apparently the last in the present form) Shell Chairmans Christmas party hosted by Jeroen van der Veer. Stop by the London Aquarium to take a photo of the extraordinary car-converted-into-a-fish-tank.

As Elaine and I stroll back through Waterloo Station after the party, we bump into Phil Agland a colleague in the Earthlife days of the mid-1980s, a film-maker who has made wonderful TV series on the Cameroonian rainforest (Korup), the Baka Pygmies and a Chinese city (Beyond the Clouds), plus a rendering of Thomas Hardys The Woodlanders. We hadnt seen him since the premiere of that film. Wonderful case of serendipity.

Then, having missed our train, we were walking back to find a new one when we saw Nick Hildyard of The Corner House, a long-standing friend, who was seeing off a couple of Sudanese anti-diamond-industry campaigners. Among other things, he told me he had filed suit earlier in the day against the ECGD, whose advisory council I sit on. What a day!

Thursday, November 25, 2004

?WHAT IF!

Still cut off by BT. Busy morning in the office, then across with Yasmin (Crowther) to McKinseys offices at 1 Jermyn Street for a meeting of the Harvard Business School Alumni Club, where I was due to be the main feature. The event, organised by Daniela Barone Soares of Save the Children, resulted in an energetic discussion and a roiling series of conversations afterwards, with among others a number of current and would-be social entrepreneurs.

Then on with Yasmin to ?What If!, the innovation company based here in London, and in Manchester, New York and Sydney. We are talking to Kris Murrin about developing a process to help leapfrog SustainAbility into a new way of operating by the time we (hopefully) hit our twentieth anniversary in 2007.

Among the reasons we are interested in them: they were recently listed by the Financial Times as No 1 in the Best Place to Work for in the UK competition; and they are interested in supporting social entrepreneurs, as they have in helping launch the Belu bottled water brand, which generates funds to pay for clean water in developing world communities.

Then across to Regent Street to meet Hania and wander agog around the new Apple store there. Centred around a great glass staircase, the store is a virtual heaven on earth for the Apple-minded, Hania and I among them. What looks like a full moon this evening and, as ever, I feel revived. Home to find an amazing programme on BBC 2: a portrait of the wildlife and landscape of the Mississippi through the eyes of River Rat Kenny Sawley. Outstanding, numinous. Had me in tears at times. And then Gaia arrives back from Edinburgh. A red-letter day.

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

PACKAGING, BHOPAL AND NATASHA KAPLINKSY

A somewhat convoluted day and also finally discover that my ability to connect to the Net and broadband from my Mac at home is because BT have cut off the line. They had been sending bills to an old SustainAbility address and our accounts people hadnt noticed that. But dealing with BT is like dealing with a vast, emotionless robot, a Kafka-esque maze of dial this number and dial that but get used to being ignored whichever number you dial.

Started with a keynote speech at a conference organised by INCEPEN and the Packaging Federation. Among the people I met was Robert Opie, who founded Britains first museum of advertising and packaging, in Gloucester. Now it is moving to Londons Notting Hill and, he tells me, will focus more on environmental and sustainability aspects of the packaging story.

Then back to SustainAbility for the tail-end of an editorial meeting for the next issue of our newsletter, Radar. Then a couple of campaigners involved in campaigning for justice for the victims of the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India came in to discuss our impending report on liability regimes, which Geoff Lye has mainly authored, and which contains a case study on Dow Chemical which took over Union Carbides Bhopal assets.

The race back to Barnes to install myself in a black tie outfit which I loathe and head off to Thorpe Park, via the M4 and M25 and what seemed like endless traffic jams caused by a crash in Richmond and huge roadworks on the M25. Arrive simultaneously with Graham Tubb, Head of Sustainable Development at SEEDA (South East England Development Agency), who kindly ushers me in. Once inside the Dome, full of Disney-style giant fossils and writhing octopus tentacles, I gave another keynote to kick off the 2004 Sustainable Business Awards for the South East awards ceremony organised by SEEDA.

At dinner, find myself sitting between Kit Oliver, who first dreamed up the award scheme and chairs the judging panel, and BBC Breakfast News presenter Natasha Kaplinsky. Enjoyed them both tremendously – and found the evening tremendously energising.

One of the award winners (in fact, they won three awards) was CottonBottoms, founded by Joanne Freer to manufacture and distribute cotton nappies and to provide a nappy laundry service. Boots, Woolworths Big W and John Lewis now all supply the companys products. The significance of what CottonBottoms is trying to do is underscored by the fact that in 2003 alone 6.8 million disposable nappies were landfilled in the UK each day. And the approach avoids around a tonne of waste being landfilled for each child using real nappies.

As I mentioned to Joanne at the end of the event, our 1988 book The Green Consumer Guide had looked at the nappy issue and concluded that there wasnt (at that point) much to choose between disposable and non-disposable nappies. One reason: at that stage, nappies had to be boiled and a fair amount of detergent and/or bleach used. The increasing use of laundry services helps address those issues.

In parentheses, its interesting to note that when Gaia was born in 1977 she inherited Elaines huge, designed to last forever cotton nappies. We switched to disposables later, because of the sheer damned nuisance of all the soaking and boiling. Then I spent a merry Christmas evening, with snow falling, unblocking the drains because we had flushed the disposables and clogged the sewers.

Sunday, November 21, 2004

LES PAUL

On my way back from a day spent at the office yesterday with the board of trustees of the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, I dropped into Waterstones and Virgin in Piccadilly. Bought a number of CDs, including albums by the likes of Bill Haley & The Comets, Link Wray, Les Negresses Vertes and – on an impulse – Les Paul’s ‘The Complete Trios-Plus (1936-1947)’. Know Les Paul from his guitars for Gibson, but hadn’t realised what an extraordinary guitarist he was/is. Love his tracks with Georgia White and with Bing Crosby.

Looked him up on Google and found that not only is he still alive, but still plays in public. According to Associated Press and Yahoo News, he “can use only his left thumb and pinkie [little finger] to perform at his weekly nightclub gigs in New York. The 89-year-old takes no medication for his painful arthritis and permanent injuries from a car accident 56 years ago, because it exacerbates his ulcers. But twice every Monday night, the renowned musician also known for his innovations on the solid-body electric guitar and multitrack recording gets on stage with his trio at the Iridium Jazz Club.”

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland opened a Les Paul exhibit in March. Born Lester William Polfuss, over the past three decades, Paul has won various awards, including a Grammy with Chet Atkins for best country instrumental performance. In 1998, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and in September he won a lifetime achievement award at the Emmys.

Iridium, hopefully, here I come.

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

SAP RISES IN EAST BERLIN

Berlin. Taxi from Tegel airport drops me a block or so from the front door of software-maker SAPs front door, which gives me an opportunity to see what a contrast their modern office block makes with the surrounding dereliction of the old East Berlin. In town to do a panel session, hosted by SAP, on the results of SustainAbilitys Gearing Up report for the UN Global Compact and, in particular, to focus on the issue of corruption.

Moderated by author and journalist Susan Stern, the panel includes Catherine Volz (Chief, Treaty and Legal Affairs Branch, UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Vienna), Peter Eigen (Chairman, Transparency International, Berlin), Michael Buersch (Member of German Bundestag, Berlin, and Chairman of the Parliamentary Study Commission on the Future of Social Civic Participation), Pierre-Christian Soccoja (Executive Director, Service Control de Prevention de la Corruption, Paris) and Chris Sorek (Senior VP Public Communications, SAP, Walldorf).

The event, aimed at German corporate members of the Global Compact and of Transparency International, academics, the media and other stakeholders, is lively and prompts a good discussion. The scale of the problem in countries like Russia was underscored by several speakers, however. Having had my PC temporarily taken over by a swarm of viruses and pop-up ads while in Brazil, that is the image that comes to mind now when I think of corruption: demands for bribes at every step. We heard that even getting permission to build an apartment block in Russia takes 127 permits, involving 127 bribes.

Whatever the figures, the syndrome can only be an intense drag on the health of the economy and on the ability of ordinary citizens to think and act in the interests of the longer term.

Stay at the Westin Berlin and find myself looking straight down on the VW building where I spoke earlier in the year.

Thursday, November 11, 2004

INSTITUTO ETHOS

Spent much of the day with Instituto Ethos, a leading Brazilian CSR organisation which SustainAbility has worked with on a couple of projects. Its 907 company members account for annual revenues of approximately 30% of the Brazilian GDP and employ roughly 1.2 million people. Their main characteristic, Ethos says, is “their interest in establishing ethical patterns for the relationship with employees, customers, suppliers, community, shareholders, public power, and the environment.”

Chaired by Oded Grajew, the person who conceived the Social World Forum and a member of the Global Compacts Advisory Council, Instituto Ethos has also recently launched UniEthos, a ‘CSR university’ for Brazil. Meet some of those involved. Then out to the airport, for Iberia, Madrid and London.

UniEthos (©JE)

DYLAN’S CHRONICLES

Read Bob Dylan’s book Chronicles on the flight back from Brazil, given to me shortly before I left by Steve Warshal. He and I have been a couple of times recently to see Dylan play – and, though my ears tend to ring for days after, the man and the music are pretty much part of my DNA. Facinating to read about his own influences – and about the process of re-invention he put himself through. Time for me to do the same?

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

FABIO FELDMANN

Spent the day with ABN Amro Real, doing two sessions, first with CSR people and then with senior management. Very impressive bunch of people – and clearly committed to the sustainability cause.

In the evening, across to dinner with Fabio Feldmann and friends. In October 2000, Fabio was appointed the Executive Secretary of the Brazilian Climate Forum, and was also Special Advisor to the President for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) meeting preparatory process in Brazil. Before that, in 1994, he was appointed State Secretary for the environment of São Paulo, leaving office in 1998. He coordinated the group that wrote the chapter on the environment in the Constitution passed in 1988. Like Julia (Hailes) and I, he holds UNEP’s Global 500 award.

Monday, November 08, 2004

NATURA

Spend the day with Natura, the hugely successful Brazilian cosmetics company, an hour’s drive from the city. Do two 1.5 hour sessions during the day with different audiences, either side of a lunch with senior management, including: Antonio Luiz da Cunha Seabra (Board Member and Founder Chairman); Guilherme Peirão Leal (current Chairman and Board Member); and Pedro Luiz Barreiros Passos (Board Member and CEO).

Natura came sixteenth in SustainAbility’s latest benchmark survey of corporate sustainability reporting, an extraordinary achievement. As the photos below show, the company’s NQ is both dramatic and beautiful, overlooking an extensive bowl of forest. Then in the evening, dinner with several Natura people at Carlota’s, run by chef Carla Pernambuco. Great wine: Case Silva 2003, from Chile.

One of the many great things about the visit to Natura was seeing an example of Brazil’s national tree, Caesalpini aechinata, commonly known as ‘pau brasil’ (www.globaltrees.org/reso_tree.asp?id=25). The tree gave its name to the country.

Sadly, years of harvesting of the Atlantic Coastal Forest have reduced the species to the verge of extinction. Exploitation still continues, however, because the tree’s extremely dense hardwood is ideal for making bows for stringed musical instruments. It was also long used to produce red ink – an ironic link to the ecological its felling has caused. Tried its fruit: delicious.

Part of Natura’s HQ (©JE)

Natura vista 1 (©JE)

Natura vista 2 (©JE)

Inside view (©JE)

In the Hall of Mirrors (©JE)

Darkest tree is Pau Brasil (©JE)

Waiting (©JE)

Sunday, November 07, 2004

NO MAN’S LAND IN SAO PAULO

Nelmara Arbex of Natura picked me up from the hotel and took me to lunch and then to the São Paulo’s 26th Biennial art exhibition, held in 25,000 square metres of exhibition space on three floors of the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, Parque do Ibirapuera. The theme: Território Livre. In English, apparently, that’s ‘Image Smugglers in a Free Territory’. The concept stems from the notion of no man’s land, geographically, politically, socially and aesthetically – with art defying the boundaries of reality.

Among the wonders: a giant spider by Louise Bourgeois and a huge plane made from all the sharp objects we aren’t allowed to take into the skies these days. As we walked back through the park, dropping off to suck on a coconut on the way, my eye was taken by a 10-seater bike at a cycle rental stall. Perfect locomotion for a crowded world.

Spider by Louise Bourgeois (©JE)

Memorial to extinction of passenger pigeons (©JE)

Giant plane made out of … (©JE)

… all the sharp things we can’t take on plaes today (©JE)

Nelmara Arbex (©JE)

Bike for an increasingly crowded world (©JE)

ECONOMIST ON RISK & OPPORTUNITY

The Economist ran a nice article and leader on SustainAbility’s latest report, Risk & Opportunity, in last week’s edition.

The leader, which is premium content, is at:

www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?Story_id=3353315

The article, which is freely available, is at:

www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?Story_id=3364578

Saturday, November 06, 2004

THE SOCIAL CAPITAL MARKET

Chaired the final plenary session of the Schwab Foundation summit early this afternoon. The focus was on what financial and development institutions can do to support social entrepreneurship.

The panel were: David de Ferranti (Vice President for Latin America and the Caribbean, World Bank), David Horn (Managing Director, Private Wealth Management, Morgan Stanley), Jan Piercy (Shorebank, one of the first US regulated banks to embrace sustainable development goals), Alvaro Augusto Vidigal (President, Banco Paulista, and Head of BOVESPA’s – they are the Sao Paulo Stock Exchange – social investment market), Youssef Dib (Global Coordinator, Private Wealth Management, BNParaibas) and Peter Blom (CEO, Triodos Bank).

A very enjoyable session, with real energy. Then by car to Sao Paulo, with Thais Corral, who runs REDEH (Rede de Desenvolvimento Humano), then out to dinner with Thais and Fabio Feldmann (see subsequent entry).

Friday, November 05, 2004

GILBERTO GIL

Second day of the conference – and I chair a session on the potential of mergers & acquisitions in the field of social enterprise, then report back to the plenary. Vigorous discussion, but most of the entrepreneurs find it hard to see how M&A approaches could help, or at least do so without inolving the sacrifice of their values. But towards the end of the session, a number of speakers give examples of how mergers have worked in the worlds of social enterprise.

In the evening, there’s ‘Brazil Night’. We are serenaded by Gilberto Gil, one of the founders of the ‘Tropicalia’ movement in the 1960s. His first album in 1967 helped win him great popularity, but then he and Caetano Veloso were exiled from Brazil by the military regime. Returning to Brazil in 1972, Gil not only continued to build his musical reputation but also emerged as an energetic political and environmental activist – and was appointed Brazil’s Minister of Culture by President Lula, a role he continues to play.

Finding myself at Gil’s table, we talk about guitars: one of his first instruments was an accordion – and he later tranposed his accordion style to the guitar. Then the evening rages on with an extended performance from one of the samba schools. [Later addition: Because of my ankle, I don’t dance – and on the next day am repeatedly chastised for my failure to do so by folk who had invited me to take to the floor. An extraordinary example was set by one of the social entrepreneurs who took the floor in his wheelchair and executed the most amazing gyrations in the midst of the samba dancers.]

Gilberto Gil (©JE)

Thursday, November 04, 2004

BIRDSONG WITH HAMMERS

Arrived in Campinas, Brazil, yesterday morning. The noise outside my window in the Royal Palm Plaza is more or less what you’d expect of any emerging economy: birdsong, overlaid with frantic hammering and sawing, against the backdrop of distant traffic. Am here for the ‘How Big Can Small Get?’ annual summit of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. And because of recent changes at the World Economic Forum, I have been asked to chair an additional session tomorrow – on the theme of what we can learn from scaling in different growth models, which is pretty much core to the event’s theme and an area we are increasingly pondering at SustainAbility.

Monday, November 01, 2004

RISK & OPPORTUNITY LAUNCHED AT S&P

Frenetic day, then across with much of the SustainAbility team to Standard & Poor’s HQ in Docklands for the launch of Risk & Opportunity. Energetic event, though the acoustics in the vast atrium left a little to be desired. Powerful reverb.

One difficult question in the discussion period focused on why British American Tobacco (BAT) appears in our Top 10, given that their products kill people? Question came from the anti-smoking group ASH.

My answer was that, while we don’t work with the tobacco industry, despite frequent requests to do so, I feel that our benchmarking work should cover all sectors and all relevant companies. provided the data are publicly available, campaigning groups and other actors can then bring better informed pressure to bear on offending industries – as ASH did with BAT’s first social report, which they reverse engineered to produce and publish statistics on how many deaths it took BAT to make each million pounds – or whatever – of revenue.

Next: Nick (Robinson) and Peter (Zollinger) area heading off to Seattle to launch the report at an event hosted by Starbucks, then come Berlin and Paris.

Some of the participants at the launch (©JE)