A look at the World Business Council’s membership shows a remarkable overlap with the busiest ERT member companies – Fiat, Asea Brown Boveri, Nestlé, Philips and Unilever to name just a few. However, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) sings quite a different tune than does the ERT, describing itself as one of the world’s most influential green business networks. Indeed, many feel that the WBCSD can be given significant credit for the lack of global progress in the areas of environment and development since its creation.
The Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD) was created in 1990 by Swiss industrialist Stephan Schmidheiny1 upon request of his friend Maurice Strong, Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED, or the Rio Earth Summit) which was then just beginning its preparatory work. Strong, a well-connected businessman himself, felt that the blossoming Earth Summit could profit from strong input from the industry side. He asked Schmidheiny, whose wealth comes primarily from his Swatch company (specializing in colourful watches) and major investments in the asbestos industry2, to bring together 48 prominent business leaders from around the world in order to form the BCSD. Early BCSD companies included Asea Brown Boveri (ABB), Chevron, Ciba-Geigy, Daimler Benz, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Mitsubishi, Norsk Hydro, Shell and Volkswagen.
Many NGOs left Rio feeling as if the conference had been ‘hijacked’3 by the industry lobby, organized in the vocal BCSD. The Business Council managed to adopt radical-sounding but conceptually empty language in order to talk convincingly about the need for a radical transformation towards sustainable development. According to Chatterjee and Finger in Earth Brokers, “UNCED set up a process through which TNCs were transformed from lobbyists at a national level to legitimate global agents, i.e. partners of governments. UNCED gave them a platform, from where they could frame the new global issues in their own terms”.4 Indeed, NGO attempts to force some regulation on free-wheeling, polluting multinationals failed completely: in fact, one chapter of Agenda 21 is entitled: Strengthening the Role of Industry.
In 1995, the BCSD merged with the World Industry Council for the Environment (WICE) and became the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). It gained several new members, including Maurice Strong, newly appointed CEO of the Canadian power company Ontario Hydro. WICE had been initiated by the International Chamber of Commerce in 1993 with the goal of involving industry in Earth Summit follow-up. Its top man, Rodney Chase, a managing director of British Petroleum, became the chair of WBCSD, and the new executive director is Björn Stigson, a former head man at Asea Brown Boveri. The WBCSD is headquartered in Geneva.
Today, the WBCSD continues to promote environmental protection through economic growth, self-regulation and unencumbered markets. Its members are firm believers in eco-efficiency (waste and energy use reduction during the production phase), although they have expressed minimal interest in more radical proposals for reduced production and consumption. They have leapt to the cause of providing a business input into the UNCED evaluation which takes place in June 1997 “as a way to show that business has risen to the challenges put forward by the Earth Summit in 1992”.5 Indeed, “industry, and especially our 125 international members companies, are playing a pivotal role in the sustainable development process”.6 Just a few lines later, that pivotal role is clarified: “In order to create more wealth and be the engine of economic development, business must be successful and profitable”.7
Membership is by invitation of the WBCSD Chairman to “corporations seeking to provide business leadership in sustainable development and environmental performance”. Members, who must be CEOs or the equivalent rank, today number around 125 and represent companies such as British Petroleum, Cargill, Fiat, General Motors, Heineken, ICI, Lafarge, Monsanto, Nestlé, Philips, Procter & Gamble, Rio Tinto Zinc, Sony, Statoil, Texaco, Toyota, Unilever, Volvo, Waste Management International, Western Mining Corporation, Weyerhaeuser, and, strangely enough, James D. Wolfensohn, current World Bank President.8
The membership ticket is not cheap by any standards at US$50,000 per individual; however, the green prestige which companies can claim when associated with the WBCSD is no doubt a valuable commodity. Executive Director Stigson, while admitting that the companies themselves may not necessarily be green, stressed that the WBCSD helps them to highlight their specific green actions.
The WBCSD operates in a similar manner to other industry lobby groups: an Executive Committee meeting two or three times per year, an annual meeting for all members, working groups on various subjects, occasional reports, and a quarterly newsletter. But according to Sander van Bennekom of the Netherlands Committee for IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature), “BCSD is more a philosophy than a work programme... For instance the BCSD states that as a future challenge business will have to move towards zero pollution emissions and redirecting product development to meet social needs, including those of the poor. These ambitious goals are not, however, translated into concrete activities and responsibilities for the business sector”.9
The WBCSD also relies strongly on close partnerships with governments, stating that: “Policy development must create the right framework conditions for business to make an effective contribution towards sustainable development”.10 Other ‘partners’ include the UN development and environment programmes, the World Bank group and regional development banks, the European Commission, and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Regarding the WTO, which Stigson described as “rather closed”, he continues: “We participate in an informal, advisory capacity. We’ve produced reports about trade and environment that were well-received, and we are often contacted”.11
The majority of WBCSD companies are also members of other industry lobby groups which use significantly less environmental rhetoric, such as the ERT. In fact, Stephan Schmidheiny himself was an ERT member until 1994, and the ERT publication Reshaping Europe commends the “powerful idea” of the BCSD, which “can replace entirely the piecemeal approach of many existing programmes that seek to control polluters through punitive measures”.12 However, in a 1997 interview, Stigson attempts to create distance between the two groups: “Their focus is on competitiveness”, he said about the ERT, but then continues, “That is important, of course. We think profit is important too”.13
In the end, it is difficult for the observer to distinguish any real differences between these major industry lobby groups. Privileged access to decision-makers, close relationships with other leading industries, and the same basic goals of competitiveness and profit – all coated with a heavy layer of green paint – ensure that the WBCSD will continue to be a leading influence on the direction of global environment and development policies in the near future.
1. Schmidheiny is also on the board of both Nestlé and ABB. Nick Mayhew, Hijacking Environmentalism: Corporate Responses to Sustainable Development. Richard Welford, Earthscan 1997. |back to text|
2. Which he sold upon his initiation into the Earth Summit process. Pratap Chatterjee and Matthias Finger, The Earth Brokers, Routledge, 1994. |back to text|
3. Friends of the Earth International, LINK, April/May 1992. |back to text|
4. Pratap Chaterjee and Matthias Finger, The Earth Brokers, Routledge, 1994. |back to text|
5. CSD Update, Vol. III, No. 4, February 1997. A publication of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development. |back to text|
6. Ibid. |back to text|
7. Ibid. |back to text|
8. WBCSD brochure, Members, July 1996. |back to text|
9. Green Business Policies: What to Do With It?, Sander van Bennekom, ANPED Working Group on Changing Consumption and Production Patterns, July 1996. |back to text|
10. WBCSD, Annual Review, 1995. |back to text|
11. Personal interview with Björn Stigson, Brussels, 17 January 1997. |back to text|
12. ERT, Reshaping Europe, 1991, p.49. |back to text|
13. Personal interview with Björn Stigson, Brussels, 17 January 1997. |back to text|