Can corporate-NGO partnerships save the environment? Part 1

Addressing the New Global Agenda

In the 1990s NGOs sought to engage leading companies in combatting two key issues: global climate change and biodiversity loss. The EU embraced the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which called for a five per cent cut in industrialised nations' greenhouse gas emissions, but other developed countries, most notably the US, and some developing countries resisted it, fearing negative impacts on their economies. With governments slow to act, NGOs turned their sights to the private sector, hoping to demonstrate that the costs of reducing emissions and protecting biodiversity were lower than many critics argued.

Global Climate Change

In 1998, as US resistance slowed ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change was established to seek innovative policy solutions, creating a Business Environmental Leadership Council to bring the weight of Fortune 500 corporations into the policy debate.

Environmental Defense organised the Partnership for Climate Action in 2000 with Alcan, BP, Dupont, Entergy, Ontario Power Generation, Pechiney, Shell International, and Suncor Energy. If these companies were a country, they would rank 12th in emissions of greenhouse gases. Dupont made the most ambitious pledge: to reduce emissions 65 per cent below 1990 levels by 2010. The company had already achieved a 60 per cent reduction by 2000. BP achieved its goal of reducing emissions 10 per cent below 1990 levels eight years ahead of schedule in 2002.

World Wildlife Fund and the Center for Energy and Climate Solutions established the Climate Savers Program to help corporations develop innovative greenhouse gas reduction strategies and to gain public recognition for their accomplishments.

Chicago's Environmental Financial Products, LLC and the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University are working to establish the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), the world's first private trading market for greenhouse gases.

The success of these initial partnerships is spurring other companies to take voluntary action. In the US, the Business Roundtable encourages its members to measure their emissions and to adopt voluntary targets for reducing them.

A national policy of incentives for these types of strategies could result in substantial emissions reductions at minimal economic cost. Such a policy should include incentives for commercialisation of low-emission energy technologies, which will be essential for dramatic emissions reductions in the future.

To reduce costs to the economy, the policy should also provide mechanisms for emissions trading and carbon offset investments, both domestically and internationally, structured to ensure biodiversity conservation. For example, conservation and restoration of threatened forests should be encouraged, while conversion of natural habitat to forest plantations or cropland should be discouraged.

Biodiversity

An even greater number of partnerships have formed to promote conservation of biodiversity, which is a more urgent problem.

The world faces an extinction crisis unparalleled since the age of the dinosaurs, brought on by conversion of natural habitats for human use, pollution of air and water, hunting and fishing of threatened species, and the introduction of non-native species into natural habitats. Particularly at risk are the global biodiversity hotspots, 25 regions that harbour nearly half of the world's plant species and over a third of all vertebrate animal species. A number of key industries both contribute to biodiversity loss and offer the potential to deliver conservation solutions. Among these forestry, agriculture, fisheries, energy development, mining, and tourism are especially important.

Forestry

The world's forests are home to most of its terrestrial biodiversity and logging is the most visible threat, although the impact of agriculture is actually more extensive. As a result of campaigns major retailers such as Home Depot, Ikea, Lowes Home Improvement Warehouse, and Staples have pledged to replace wood products from threatened forests with products from forests certified as sustainably managed.

The first forest certification program, SmartWood, was established by the Rainforest Alliance in 1989 and the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) was launched in 1993 to provide a credible system for certifying "well managed forests". FSC 's global principles and criteria address environmental, social, and economic aspects of forestry. To date, FSC certification has been awarded to 453 forestry operations in 56 countries with a total area of more than 72 million acres. A Global Forest and Trade Network (GFTN) of more than 700 companies has been established to promote FSC certification among producers, traders, and retailers of forest products.