Can corporate-NGO partnerships save the environment? Part 2

A second key strategy is to expand the focus of voluntary initiatives. To create partnerships that look 'beyond the fence-line', NGOs need to emphasize the business case for doing good, not just for doing less harm. Most to date have focused on reducing firms' own environmental impacts. The focus needs to be more on creating innovative solutions for the problem at the landscape or global level. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions among a handful of leading energy companies makes a tiny dent in atmospheric concentrations but the successful commercialisation of low-carbon energy technologies by those firms could have a tremendous impact. Environmental partnerships need to use corporate pride as motivator, not only corporate responsibility for correcting bad behaviour.

The lack of major business-NGO partnerships on water conservation is interesting as water availability has been identified as one of the key environmental challenges of the new century. The problem of water scarcity in most regions results not from the behaviour of large industrial firms, but from inefficient water use in agriculture and from the degradation of watersheds. Shifting the focus of partnerships to creating landscape-level water conservation solutions could attract valuable corporate allies.

The third key strategy is to create partnerships that involve joint business-NGO advocacy for effective public policies. The proposition that public policy will not change could be refuted if corporations and NGOs change the terms of the environmental policy debate. If progressive business leaders and environmentalists agree a common environmental policy agenda the political winds could shift rapidly. The Pew Center for Global Climate Change, with its Business Environmental Leadership Council, is an excellent example of this approach.

For any of these strategies to work NGOs need to learn to compromise, to build trust and to collaborate on innovative solutions while keeping up the pressure, without which large corporations have little incentive to take voluntary action. It is probably most effective for some NGOs to specialize in pressure, and others in collaborative solutions - and for each to recognise the value in the other's role.

NGOs also need to learn to work more collaboratively with each other. Too often ego and competition for donors and media attention prevent NGOs forging alliances that could yield larger-scale results. Competition among NGOs leaves corporate partners confused. The Center for Environmental Leadership in Business has found that it is often harder to get NGOs to collaborate than companies in highly competitive industries.

With ingenuity and a spirit of compromise, business leaders and conservationists can together accomplish a world of good for the environment and for the economy in this era of strange bedfellows.

This is part two of a two part series. Part one is available here