The long battle (with GE, BHP, McMoRan, Dow, Rio, etc)

Human settlement has through necessity, followed the river, for rivers are the arteries and veins of our landscape – quenching, nourishing, filtering, transporting, supporting life, providing places of beauty, serenity and spirit. They provide fisheries, agricultural lands, tourism opportunities, water for farms, towns and cities, and they support populations, cultures and economies.

The above is from a document of International Riverfoundation. With less than 1% of the world’s surface comprised of the very freshwater that sustains all life outside of the oceans – our rivers, and lakes and wetlands – we would be dead without them. Or we may well soon be dead because of them.

We have over time, systematically damaged the necessary biodiversity that had maintained river health for millennia, by both direct and indirect actions. For the smartest of all the animal species, we are surely also without doubt, the dumbest.

• Over 60% of the world’s major rivers have been altered by dams and diversions, changing their flow and resulting ecological health.
• Urban development has deforested and contaminated river catchments and banks, aiding the sedimentation of creeks and river mouths; it has destroyed fish spawning grounds and entire fish species, and the habitat of birds and bees, essential to the pollination of food crops.
• Agricultural activities have exhausted water supplies and returned pesticides and nitrogen rich fertilizers to the river systems, aiding in diminished water quality, fish kills and enhancement of bacterial and algal infestation.
• Still we continue to use fresh drinking water for industrial cooling requirements rather than recycled water.
• And incomprehensibly, in some places we continue to dump cyanide-laden tailings from gold and copper mines and other industrial waste, directly into once mighty and pristine rivers, creating toxic swamps.

These issues are not limited to undeveloped or developed countries, rural or urban areas – they are shared across boundaries, across socio-economic divides, across cultures. Systemic contamination of marine ecosystems and river basins has critical implications for water quality, reliable supply, and sustainable use worldwide. There is now evidence to suggest it is this kind of abuse of water resources that destroyed the advanced ancient civilizations such as Angkor Wat, and it is this that threatens our own civilization today.

According to United Nations research:

• Today, roughly one quarter of the world’s population still does not have access to clean water; about 2.3 billion people annually suffer from diseases linked to unclean water, and over 5 million people die each year due to a lack of safe drinking water and adequate sanitation.
• Nearly half of the world’s projected population lives in areas where there already is or will be insufficient water within the next decade.
• Yet by the year 2050, it is estimated that we will need 14% more fresh water than we have today, just to sustain our growing world population.

While most people assume these issues apply to undeveloped, uneducated third world countries, let me ask you, would you drink directly from the Hudson? The Thames? The Yellow? The Yarra? The Los Angeles River? Just think about that – because we used to.

Worldwide, the future of our rural economies and the availability of freshwater for food, for our cities – in fact life itself – depends on what our government regulators and leading corporations do from herein.

The long battle to bring GE to account for its contamination of the Hudson River, New York – the cleanup of which has only just begun this year – is a reminder that it is for the most part we as corporate citizens who have created and profited from many of the world’s major environmental and associated social problems. We therefore have a duty; a responsibility to contribute to the solutions.

It is precisely because of the traditional ways of doing business – I’d like to say old, but sadly it remains current in most industries and countries – that companies are facing escalating public image risks. These risks are increasing across geographic areas, frequency and magnitude.

Our problem lies in the tradition of evaluating projects and opportunities on the economics of a cost/benefit ratio that did not include environmental costs; that did not include cultural or social impact costs. These soft issues, perceived as hindrances to profitability, were hardly priorities for companies under pressure to deliver shareholder returns. And so, those returns came at the direct expense of the environment; of the communities in which major corporations had the upper hand; in remote, under-the-radar areas, and in cities prepared to avert their eyes in exchange for jobs and revenue.

Examples of this straddle the world, from BHP’s desecration of the Ok Tedi and Fly Rivers and Freeport-McMoRan’s sins on the Ajkwa, through Dow Chemical’s shameful legacy at the Saginaw and GEs toxic history on the Hudson River and too many more to name.

It is not good enough to say well, that was then; this is now, because we still see today those same companies avoiding blame by whichever means they can. They are selling out or walking out of environmentally devastated situations, or fighting legal cases to diminish the financial cost and consequences of their abuse of our trust, even while many of them continue to do so elsewhere.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is not simply a new marketing fad; an activity requiring a separate department and advertising budget. CSR is today an imperative for a better bottom-line as these once soft issues of environmental and social cost prove engagement with a greener, cleaner, kinder business model, can be the most profitable of all investment options.

It is as much external pressures as internal driving a lot of this behavioural change, as Gen X and Y employees demand greater accountability and engagement with environmental protection and restoration, as lawyers add up the cost benefit ratios of liability vs. better business practices, and risk managers develop their public image risk models.

Today, a company’s direct and measurable performance of its social responsibility obligations shapes its ability to attract and retain skilled staff and frames its customer relationships. It determines a company’s ability to operate in certain countries, to obtain government contracts, and it ultimately directly impacts shareholder returns.

I believe the whole capitalist model is at risk if we don’t change our corporate behaviour, if we don’t add in the real cost of social and environmental impacts, and if we don’t soon change the way we live with our rivers and lakes and wetlands.

We need to restore and protect the Hudsons, the Saginaws and the Ok Tedis – all the waterways on which we depend – or reap the very mean consequences heading our way.

The key is to integrate the practice of CSR through the DNA of the business in everything the organisation does. To quote Bob Willard, author of The Sustainability Advantage and The Next Sustainability Wave, “saving the world and making a profit is not an either/or proposition; it is a both/and proposition.”

The challenge for us as corporate citizens is to embrace that, to accept as Bob Willard says, that corporate social responsibility is good corporate citizenship, is conscientious commerce, is sustainable capitalism.

It is not only the ethical thing to do; it is the economic thing to do, and indeed the only thing to do. Don’t you think?

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Tags: BHP, corporate behaviour, corporate social responsibility (CSR), cover up, CSR & Sustainability, culture, Dow Chemical, featured, Freeport-McMoRan, GE, greed, Ok Tedi, Rio Tinto, social responsibility, sustainability

Category: CSR & Sustainability, Reputation Management