Inside WWF Philippines

Yesterday was the Ayala Land Recharge day where all the employees allocated their volunteer services to a selection of 5 non-profit organizations. WWF was the environment group. WWF Marketing and Climate Change teams conducted a climate change workshop to over 100 Ayala Land employees.

We at WWF figured, Ayala Land – land development – climate change - critical. The morning was an onslaught of information on climate change, the rise and fall of ancient civilizations and the factors that lead to decline, predominantly environmental damage and climate change. Then we went into 2 hours of what caused global warming, why, who, what was the situation in the Philippines, global and local impacts.

The afternoon was dedicated to a carbon footprinting exercise. As expected, the average Ayala Land employee emitted huge amounts of carbon, way over the average Filipino’s 0.9 tonnes a year. Again as expected, the majority of emissions came from transportation, about 3 times the amount of carbon than other sources such as electricity, waste, etc.

Your average Ayala Land employee pretty much represents your average Metro-Manila employee who commutes an average of 1 hour a day to get to work and another hour to go home. As the largest land developer in the Philippines, and the company that built Makati, obviously there was something terribly twisted in the thinking, or rather, the planning to have engendered a Metro-Manila lifestyle that produced a standard of 2 hours commute a day. But hey, like all good Filipinos, they were simply miming the American development models where owning a car is a given, and we all know what this lifestyle contributes to climate not to mention the blind eye it turns to those who can’t own a car, like maybe 40% of the population.

The last exercise of the day was group case studies of 3 development projects. The groups had to identify how the projects were contributing to dangerous climate change and recommend mitigation and adaptation measures. Obviously the group got it and then maybe they didn’t get it. On the problem of clearing the trees off land as is the practice upon ground breaking, the solution was replanting. This was a retro-fit, after-the-fact solution but no one talked about not cutting them down at all but landscaping development around the existing vegetation. But then the mindset is still, “hey, we control nature and bend it to follow our plan”. There were some surprises, such as leaving more unpaved spaces good for photosynthetic ceiling and of course the obvious ones such as, eco-design for static ventilation and natural light. They were a sharp, young group and we only had 3 hours of brainwash so give it time to sink in, deepen and flourish in innovative ideas. Seeds were planted – maybe we’ll see changing landscapes, less pollution, cleaner lifestyles, maybe hope.

Yesterday the Nido Petroleum company presented to WWF their project to drill for oil in Northwest Palawan, 51 kilometers off the coast of Busuanga. They were in the process of obtaining clearance from the DENR to begin drilling operations and had conducted the necessary consultations with the local government, people’s organizations and needed consultation with an environmental group, WWF, because the project is within the Sulu Suluwesi ecoregion. So they presented their gem of a project, taking pictures of the consultation as proof that it had happened.

The IHT front page is an article on coal and China that illustrates the predicament the world is in today. China is the center of global climate change discussions. There is no sustainable world without a sustainable China with over a 5th of the world’s population. Energy generation in China has to keep up with the rapid 10% per annum economic growth and right now one of the solutions is to build a new coal plant every 7 to 10 days. To watch China develop today is like seeing the Industrial Revolution that kicked off the northern world economies over 100 years unfold over a span of 10 years, and unfortunately, replaying the same dangerous phases that, on hindsight, destroyed much of the world environment and contributed wholesale to climate change. Today, China burns more coal than the US, Europe and the rest of the world.

I was at the recent workshop on 'Sustainabiliy: Process, Product and Profitability' hosted by WWF Philippines in partnership with Terra Consult and ESD Consulting Ltd. of the UK. Participants included representatives from was an impressive list of companies operating in the Philippines - HSBC, Standard Chartered, Bank of the Philippine Islands, Ayala Land Inc., Philip Morris, First Philippine Holdings Corporation etc.

Walter Manning the CEO HSBC-Philippines kicked off the day with an insightful welcome that set the tone for dragging Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) out of external affairs or commuications departments (CSR is more than writing a cheque and handing it over) and placing it firmly in the context of long-term survival of the business (need to think sustainable to remain profitable in the long term).

Over the course of the day Jimmy Brannigan and Joss Tantram introduced the principles of CSR, put forward the
business case for CSR and provided participants with tools and techniques to engage in CSR within their companies. At the end they asked the participants to develop an action plan and inspired them with Margaret Mead's famous quote; 'Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed individuals can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.'

I believe that the workshop opened the eyes of many of the participants, however, for them to move the CSR/sustainability agenda up the decision making tree within their companies - to get their senior management teams to think about how to mainstream the concept will take much effort and time. WWF Philippines will need provide effective long term support to the efforts of the CSR executives.

The hiatus is over. Sorry about that, but we were extremely busy with workshops on corporate sustainability over the past week. We brought over partners from the UK , Joss Tantram and Jimmy Brannigan of Terra Consult, to train corporations on the CSR shift from philanthropy to core business sustainability.

My post for today is simply to bring attention to two significant additions to the list on the left column. One is a paper on Bretton Woods by my favorite economist, Sixto K. Roxas, which you can download, and the other is a link to a video of my favorite ex-politician, Al Gore and his talk to the Stanford Graduate School students. Taking different approaches, they essentially tell us that we have to start ‘thinking’ about the way we think, calling for nothing less than a shift in worldview. Both are great thinkers, a Filipino from the Southeast and an American from the North. It’s so cool to get a global view from both sides of the equator.

An article in the Mckinsey Quarterly discusses the current spectrum of corporate positions towards their responsibility to society, posing the question, "what is the business of business?". One end is the view that “the business of business is business” and anything outside of this sphere, the environment, human rights, etc. are mere externalities. This is becoming moot in more developed countries as government intervention begins to support more sustainable corporate practices, social pressures mount and necessity itself clamors for corporations to go beyond compliance measures.

The other end of the spectrum is our old friend corporate social responsibility or CSR that corporations currently indulge in to appease consumer activists and mitigate pressure from NGOs. CSR is really a clumsy acknowledgement of the social contract. The article espouses a third position which integrates environmental and social factors in nothing less than corporate strategy, manifesting a commitment to the social contract at the heart of corporate practice.

In February this year, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development published an enlightened manifesto aptly entitled From Challenge to Opportunity: The role of business in tomorrow's society" declaring their commitment to sustainable development. The Council’s members are big name brands, leaders in industry, such as BP, Grupo Nueva, Adidas, P&G, Storebrand, and others who finally understand the meaning of responsible business.

We all have contradictions between our thoughts and our actions, principle and practice. Ours is a profoundly Catholic country and the centuries we lived under colonial rule aggravated our tortured Filipino psyche. We were animists that had to tow the line of Christianity. Imagine believing that spirits were everywhere and then being asked to worship only one god. In a way, the struggle for consistency in thought, word and deed is our lot in life. There are degrees to contradiction from downright hypocrisy on one end, to a simple disparity between belief and action. Every school has their degree of contradiction. An earlier post by Yeb Sano talks about the contradictions of an environmentalist. A survey by the Mckinsey Quarterly highlights the contradictions in corporate executives.

The IHT reports a shift in how investment funds are managed. Asset managers are increasingly considering social, environmental and governance factors in their valuations and investment strategies for long term value. This is happening in more developed countries. A new report published by ASrIA pushes the integration of environment, social and governance factors in sectoral valuations to determine investment risks. The trend begins in Asia.