WiserEarth Suggestions

Socially Responsible Business

The Problem: Corporate Dominance & Irresponsibility

Reflections by Mike Seymour

• “Evidence is mounting that economic growth and free trade are not leading us toward economic justice and environmental sustainability. To the contrary, they are taking us in the direction of increasing economic injustice and environmental unsustainability” David Korten.
• Since 1950, the world's economic output has increased 5 to 7 times. That growth has already increased the human burden on the planet's regenerative systems-its soils, air, water, fisheries, and forestry systems-beyond what the planet can sustain.
• In 1960 the annual compensation of the average CEO of a major US. company was 40 times that of the average worker. In 1992 it was 157 times as much. The average CEO of a large corporation now receives an annual compensation package of more than $3.5 million-their reward for growing company profits by destroying millions of jobs. The ten highest paid CEO’s in 2000 got an average of a whopping $154 million, 4,300% higher than the top ten in 1960.
• Over the past 5 year the profits of the Standard and Poors 500 largest corporations have grown an average of 20% a year, while real wages adjusted for inflation have declined.
• Enron's demise was the biggest corporate collapse in history. Arthur Andersen, the firm that audited Enron's books, was convinced of obstruction of justice on June 15th 2002. In June, WorldCom, one of the largest telecom communications companies in the world, was accused of the biggest accountancy fraud in history.
• Governments have succumbed to corporate pressure, and many western democracies have been severely compromised by the far-reaching economic and political power of the transnational corporations, according to economist Noreena Hertz and many others.
• The top 500 corporations account for 33% of global GNP (gross national product) and 76% of world trade, double their share from 1960. (UNCTAD).
• Sales of the world’s ten largest transnational corporations exceed the Gross National Product of the world;s 100 economically least developed countries  (UNCTAD).
• Tobacco companies gave $7 million to the Bush campaign, and the federal government later abandoned its lawsuits against tobacco companies, saving about $100 billion in future damages and compensations.

It was a big day for me when I put on my new tailor-made suit and stepped onto the elevator in Rockefeller Plaza office building in New York city and went to the 33d floor where I had just started to work for Avon Products, the largest direct seller of  women’s beauty products, now over  $8 billion in revenue and employing worldwide close to 150,000 people. I remember my sense of pride at later having my own office overlooking 57th street when the company moved into its new headquarters, and my own “secretary” too. (The term administrative assistant had been invented then). And I was only a young 27 years old.

I have always considered Avon a good company.  The culture and people were healthy and upbeat. I made some good friends there, and got a series of rapid promotions and pay increases as the company rode on the crest of 20% annual profit increases from year to year. 

But I became aware quickly that there were rules in this culture that I started to bump up against. To get ahead, you had to be a “company man.” What that means is kind of hard to define, because corporations don’t publish “company man” booklets for new employees to read. If you’re lucky and have a mentor, as I did, the mentor tells you the rules as you go along.  Dress and talk a certain way. At Avon, you had better be good on your feet and present well, which we did in the product marketing department I worked in, responsible for coming up with each year’s line of new products. Next, you needed to have the right attitude of being a team player, a really nice person—kind  of like a hero personality.

Not too good for me as I was sort of a closet rebel. And you had to be ready to do and go where the company wanted to use you, even if it wasn’t exactly what you had in mind for your career.  So, as much as I liked Avon, I started to feel suffocated. In time, we parted ways, as I did finally with my career in large corporations, which also included Gillette Corp. and Spalding Sporting Goods.

Corporations are not the only social organizations with cultures, norms and unwritten rules that shape how people behave. Any kind of human organization exerts the same sort of influence on its participants—schools, churches, civic organizations, families. But the thing with corporations, especially today, is that many have grown powerful and unaccountable to public interests in ways that present a threat to democracies, people’s welfare and the environment. In spite of the fact that big transnational corporations are filled with lots of good, well-meaning people--like the people I knew at Avon--the rules these people are obligated to work by preclude addressing the root injustices created by the companies they work for. If you want to stay employed, you don’t look too deep or talk too much about the controversial things a company is doing—like unfair wage and employment practices in its overseas plants, improper dumping of waste materials, fancy accounting games that make profits look better than they are, or that fact that women and minorities don’t get paid as much or advance as fast as white males.

I like Thom Hartmann’s analogy in his book The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: The Fate of the World and What We Can do Before it’s Too Late when he compares corporations to a race of robots that have invaded and taken over the world. An exaggeration? Perhaps. But consider this description Hartmann makes. “Non-living, non-breathing entities have risen up and taken over the world. They can live forever, don’t fear death or prison, feel no pain, can change citizenship in an afternoon, get the legal rights of a person, can tear off parts of themselves to create new entities, don’t need fresh air to breathe, healthy food or good water to survive.” Sounds pretty monstrous, doesn’t it? If you want to see this analogy in film, go rent The Matrix video, showing an inhuman world in which machines have taken over and are controlling the virtual consciousness of humans who are being used like batteries as an energy supply to power this dead world.  How close are we in essence to being like the world of the Matrix?

What’s wrong with Business as Usual?

Not all corporations are bad.  In fact many operate ethically and with good intentions, and include lots of smaller regional companies that have a strong identity with the people and place were they operate. However the way publicly owned corporations are structured combined with pro-business legislation of the last 30 years have created the potential for social, environmental abuses on a very large scale, especially as big corporations have gotten even bigger.

To begin with corporations have been structured for profit with less regard for the welfare of  people and the environment which too often suffer from corporate actions. Deeper than that is an entire culture in which human greed and money rule, with the making of money taking precedence over human considerations. Corporations are in business to stay in business and make money for their stockholders. They obviously need to serve their clients well, and treat employees fairly and with respect, otherwise they would lose in market share. But those are strategies to remain profitable, which is one key way companies measure their health. A corporate CEO doesn’t hold his position long if the company’s profits remain low, if stock values stagnate for long periods of time or there are no dividends paid to stockholders. 

So let’s review some of the downside in how corporations are structured and function.

No Connection Between Owners & Managers and the People Affected:

In the biggest corporations stockholders (most of whom are institutions themselves) and managers are divorced from the areas and people adversely affected by company operations, so they can’t see the ills the companies they invest in are creating.  I doubt if investors in Union Carbide ever saw any of the 8,000 bodies of Indian people who died on the night of  December 3, 1984 when the world’s worst chemical disaster occurred. Few, if any, of the employees or management of Union Carbide were at the bedside when another 20,000 who died from further complications of chemical poisoning. And investors were probably happy when Union Carbide said they offered settlements to the Indian government that were for the very meager sum of $470 million, far less that the $3 billion the Indian government had sought. Union Carbide also played delay and denial tactics in the negotiations, figuring they could outlast the sickened people filing claims who had nowhere near the financial resources of a big company. Despite years of legal actions, the actual sums of money Union Carbide has handed over is absurdly small in comparison with the extent of human suffering and environmental damage. Only about $12 million in direct emergency aid was given, plus the establishment of a trust for medical care of victims. But to date, the legal systems of the US and India have done relatively little to address the victim’s needs for food, shelter, employment and the kind of sustained medical treatment needed. In 1999, Dow Chemical, the second largest chemical manufacturer in the world, bought Union Carbide. Dow has taken the position that they have no legal liability for the Bhopal disaster, since they did not own Union Carbide at the time of the accident. While Union Carbide is the largest such chemical disaster, it is only one of thousands of such incidents in which companies have turned a blind eye to the human and environmental harm they had caused.

Owners and managers not liable for the actions of companies: limited liability.

When you or I do something that causes harm to other people or to the environment, there are laws which hold us accountable.  But that’s not true of the people who own or run corporations. Investors have what is know as limited liability, which means their liability is limited to the extent of their investment.  And business managers are protected from legal suits by the nature of how companies are incorporated, protecting its employees and agents from legal action. 

So, if I invest $1,000 in a company and it goes bankrupt because of some environmental disaster it created, the most I can lose is my $1,000.  This is good for raising capital for business, and good in a kind of selfish way for the investor. But, society (in other words average people like you and me) pays the price for the greed or shortsightedness of company managers.

Corporations Gained the Rights of Individual Personhood

1886 is one of the most important milestones in the development of the modern corporation. The US Supreme Court ruled in the case of Santa Clara county versus Pacific Railroad Company that the 14th Amendment, an amendment designed to protect human beings, applied to corporations. (Initially one of he principal reasons the 14th amendment came about was to address the rights given to America’s newly freed African slaves.) Specifically, the amendment declares that no state shall deprive "any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." This meant that corporations had personhood, like people, and were therefore entitled to the rights and privileges of a person. This runs totally against what the founders of he American constitution had in mind. Franklin, Jefferson and others were weary of corporations which, like the English Dutch East India Company, had tried to gain control of the tea and other markets in the colonies.  With individual rights, corporations could now claim discrimination or free speech rights and have a legal tool to fight state and local regulations and taxation.

Thom Hartmann summarizes the list of rights that corporations as persons have now claimed which grossly increases their power and their ability to abuse the public and escape the consequences. 

“But today corporations are asserting that they -- and only they -- should stand side-by-side with humans in having access to the Bill of Rights. Nike asserted before the Supreme Court last year, as Sinclair Broadcasting did in a press release last month, that these corporations have First Amendment rights of free speech. Dow Chemical in a case it took to the Supreme Court asserted it has Fourth Amendment privacy rights and could refuse to allow the EPA to do surprise inspections of its facilities. J.C. Penney asserted before the Supreme Court that it had a Fourteenth Amendment right to be free from discrimination -- the Fourteenth Amendment was passed to free the slaves after the Civil War -- and that communities that were trying to keep out chain stores were practicing illegal discrimination. Tobacco and asbestos companies asserted that they had Fifth Amendment rights to keep secret what they knew about the dangers of their products. With the exception of the Nike case, all of these attempts to obtain human rights for corporations were successful, and now they wield this huge club against government that was meant to protect relatively helpless and fragile human beings.”

http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/05/01/int05004.html

Corporate Political Influence & the Erosion of Democracy

Public Citizen: Protecting Health, Safety and Democracy

http://www.citizen.org/_corpcrime/politics/index.cfm

Money talks.  Corporate influence of government legislation and politics has put democracy at risk. Many critics would argue today that America barely has any true democracy left. The Jack Adramoff scandal is just the most recent in a long line of influence-peddling in Washington. Political lobbyist Abramoff appeared on the cover of Time Magazine January, 2006 issue as the man bought Washington. He was convicted of three criminal felony counts for defrauding American Indian tribes and corrupting public officials. But his crimes in influencing how legislation was written go way beyond what the courts were able to pin on him. 

Political action committees are another source of influence that often favors special interest and business groups. PACS, as they are known, are legally constituted private groups that can accept and give funds to candidates.  Although there are limits on the amounts given, there is no limit on how much they can spend on issue-oriented advertising campaigns, in effect giving candidates with certain issue platforms a back-door way to get their message out, even if the message is not directly associated with their candidacy. Since 1996, so-called `issue advertising' abuses have exploded. The Annenberg Public Policy Center estimates that between $275 million and $340 million was spent on issue advertising in 1998, the last election year for which data are available. However, no one can be certain of the exact figure since no disclosure is required. Both political parties, as well as a wide range of interest groups and entities whose origin and purpose remain largely a mystery, have exploited issue advocacy in recent elections. They have run ads that clearly are designed to advocate the election or defeat of specific federal candidates, but evade federal election regulations by avoiding the `magic words.'

Links between government officials and business have always existed, but have never been as blatant as in the Bush administration. The consequences are obvious that the government will be more and more pro-business. http://www.opensecrets.org/bush/cabinet.asp#%232 and less looking out for the little guy. Vice President Dick Cheney was former CEO of Halliburton, the world’s largest oil field services company which got huge contracts in Iraq, some of which were not even put out to other bidders. Halliburton also just recently announced its intention to move its corporate headquarters to Dubai in the Middle East, effectively avoiding US taxes. Most of the Bush cabinet and key advisors (see link above) have strong connections in the business world which, in itself, is not bad, except to the degree it seriously biases their views.

Pro-business political appointees are often put in change of departments with a mandate to undo the mission of that department, like what has been happening at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), charged with the all-important task of ensuring our environment’s health. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0207.schaeffer.html Check out the anti-environmental record of EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman in the Bush administration, who had a track record as New Jersey governor of gutting anti-polution measures. Also under the Reagan administration there was EPA Administrator Ann Gorsuch who, along with James Watt heading the Department of the Interior, was described by Greg Wetstone of the Environmental Resources Defense Council: “Never has America seen two more intensely controversial and blatantly anti-environmental political appointees than Watt and Gorsuch." Under Watt and Gorsuch, more environmental protections were rolled back than at any other time in US history, including an aggressive policy of issuing leases for oil, gas and coal development on tens of millions of acres of national lands—more than any other in history.

Increasing Control Through Consolidation

One of my favorite bad people in the Star Trek series were the Borg and their famous saying “resistance is futile” as they destroyed and absorbed one race after into their machine-like collective.  That’s essentially what happens when companies get bigger by absorbing others, limiting competition and doing away with checks, balances, and choices which the commercial world maintains through diversity and competition.

It is now twenty-five years since the Reagan Administration eviscerated America’s century-long tradition of antitrust enforcement which was put in place to prevent business monopolies from forming. For a generation, big firms have enjoyed almost complete license to use brute economic force to grow only bigger. And so today we find ourselves in a world dominated by immense global corporations that every day further limit the flexibility of our economy and our personal freedom within it. 

Since the great opening of global markets in the early 1990s, the tendency within most of the systems we rely on for manufactured goods, processed commodities, and basic services has been toward ever more extreme consolidation. Consider raw materials: three firms control almost 75 percent of the global market in iron ore. Consider manufacturing services: Owens Illinois has rolled up roughly half the global capacity to supply glass containers. We see extreme consolidation in heavy equipment; General Electric builds 60 percent of large gas turbines as well as 60 percent of large wind turbines. In processed materials, Corning produces 60 percent of the glass for flat-screen televisions. Even in sneakers, Nike and Adidas split a 60-percent share of the global market. Consolidation reigns in banking, meatpacking, oil refining, and grains. It holds even in eyeglasses, a field in which the Italian firm Luxottica has captured control over five of the six national outlets in the U.S. market. General Electric, Whirlpool and Maytag sell 80% of all ovens and 85% of all dryers. Proctor & Gamble, Unilever, Colgate-Palmolive and Dial account for 83% of all bar soap sold in the USA. Three companies dominate about 65% of the cable television market, and two companies 75% of the soft drink market. Globally, a mere three hundred multinational corporations account for an estimated 25% of productive assets.

Corporate Take-Overs: It’s Just for the Money

http://thedagger.com/archive/treehug/redwoods.html#bankruptcy

The movie Wall Street, staring Michael Douglas as corporate raider Gordon Gekko and Charlie Sheen as Bud Fox, the aspiring young broker, shows just how the mean and crass the world of high-flying, big business has gotten so easy and pervasive in today’s pro-business environment. The take-overs are little more than schemes to make rich people richer—often losing people jobs through cut –backs to build profits, and selling parts of companies off to the highest bidder with little regard for the integrity of the units sold. Take the example of the Pacific Lumber Company in California. It pioneered the development of sustainable logging practices on its substantial holdings of ancient redwood timber stands, provided generous benefits to its employees, fully funded its pension fund, and maintained a no lay-offs policy during downturns in the timber market. This made it a good citizen in the local community. It also made it a prime takeover target. Corporate raider Charles Hurwitz gained control in a hostile takeover. He immediately doubled the cutting rate of the company's holding of thousand-year-old trees, reaming a mile and a half corridor into the middle of the forest that he jeeringly named "Our wildlife-biologist study trail." He then drained $55 million from the company's $93 million pension fund and invested the remaining $38 million in annuities of the Executive Life Insurance Company, which had financed the junk bonds used to make the purchase - and subsequently failed.

What’s Wrong With Globalization –The New Colonialism           

You’ve got the huge problems we see today when you add up all the ills with business as usual, and then take it to a global scale with thousands of transnational corporations, many of whom have more money than many countries of the world.

Most of today’s business leaders and conservative politicians around the world today think the way to make the world better, eliminate poverty and bring peace is through a global business. Remove the restraints to trade, make regulations and taxation in countries friendly to business and companies. Make loans to developing countries through The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to develop their economies and to build energy and transport infrastructure and other economy-enhancing measures like schools and hospitals.  These measures, it is believed, will help create jobs for poor people, promote cultures for democracy, encourage literacy and education and remove the causes of social unrest and war.  The official economic term for this approach is neoliberalism.

While it sounds great on paper, neoliberal policies do not work in actuality, as has been seen in one fiasco after another in countries around the world. In fact, these policies and the transnational corporations that have benefited from them have contributed to massive third world debt, displacement of people from indigenous livelihoods, erosion of social structures and cultural diversity, weakening of national social and environmental protections, government corruption and massive income disparity that threatens peace around the world. And it is largely the devastating effect of neoliberal policies that has caused a world-wide back-lash of protest against the agencies of neoliberalism, like the World Trade Organization, The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

I’ll give a typical scenario to show how neoliberal policies might look in a country. Let’s say a group of multinational industries wants a less expensive place to make their products, so they approach poor countries in the southern hemisphere (Asia ,South America, Africa or India) which think that foreign investment will help them.  The companies find local, powerful business and government people educated in Europe or the USA to do business with and which think like the Western business people. The foreign business people negotiate deals which involve lower tax rates for foreign investment, and good deals on land, some of which may be owned by the local elites who invited them into their country in the first place. Plus the local laws protecting labor and the environment are nowhere near as strict as in the north.

If it’s necessary to create an energy and transportation infrastructure, the local elites are encouraged to apply for loans to The World Bank or International Monetary Fund. Land needed for these is often taken from people—farmers or indigenous people—who have lived and worked the land for hundreds or thousands of years, but are now displaced.  Don’t worry, the government and their foreign sponsors tell them. We’ll ensure you have wonderful jobs in these new factories we’re going to build, and we’ll give you and your children an education so that you are qualified to work in the factory.

So, indigenous people who were rich in spirit, tradition and Earth now become poor people: they and their kids now go to work in factories like slaves, instead of working on the land, and it turns out their lives are worse. First, their jobs are not secure, because in a globalized economy, factories can close as quickly as they open if cheaper labor is found elsewhere. With that threat labor bosses keep people under their thumb with fear of lay-offs if they complain about low wages or insufficient benefits.  Meanwhile, people who try to leave find they have lost the skills their families once had of tilling the land, and that the forests or fields they lived in are now ruined environmentally through cutting and pollution.

Add to that the fact that with all this Western influence, the local culture  is plastered with Coca Cola signs, Nike shoes, pop music and films and is beginning to lose its unique cultural identity. Kids no longer identify with the old ways of family or tribe, so there is a growing social alienation between young and old. Complicating this is that the move to a more “modern society” really favors the wealthier people—the rich, educated folks who connected with the foreign investors in the first place.  They are piling up money like crazy, while the poor people—in real terms—are getting poorer. Moreover, many poor people can’t afford the fees for school or health care the government now requires under something called “structural adjustments,” or requirements of the loans to the government made by The World Bank and IMF. In other words, a government taking money from these institutions, has to agree to be “fiscally responsible” and not give away expensive services like education and health care—sorry, no free education like in the USA and Europe.

The net result—the factory worker loses a once meaningful life for perhaps $7 a day, often working under horrid conditions not seen in Europe or the USA for over 100 years. There is now social unrest and insurgency groups fighting a government corrupted by money and power who are getting weapons from benefactor countries like the USA. The unhappy people have lost security since they became pawns in the wars between insurgents and government troops.  Rivers and land are polluted, making people sick. Rich local elites are stashing millions away in foreign banks, and government corruption has gotten so bad that there are periodic revolutions to oust the old regime, only to replaced by  liberators who themselves become corrupt, because the system itself is corrupt.  Meanwhile, corporate CEO’s are getting incredible bonuses, and stock-holders thousands of miles away are smiling because of their great stock returns. But the porous borders of the rich nations keep getting infiltrated by “terrorists,” who come from the angry, disenfranchised insurgents who feel that the stream of evil on their country came from the wealthy countries to the north.

This is why millions of ordinary people around the world have risen up in protest at events like The World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999. The current system of globalization is just another form of colonialism—this time it’s economic. It’s a social, environmental and moral disaster of tragic proportions.

Now I’ll give you a true story from Nigeria which I know about from friends who have visited there as part of a citizen’s diplomacy effort called Global Citizen’s Journey. This is the story of the Niger Delta, an oil-rich area on the coast of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. You can read and in-depth http://www.cdd.org.uk/resources/workingpapers/niger_delta_eng.htm article about the situation. You can also visit the web site for a video name Sweet Crude made by Sandy Cioffi http://www.sweetcrudemovie.com/ who was part of the first Global Citizen Journey delegation to Nigeria when they helped build a library for a village in the region.

Nigerian oil exploration began in the late 1950’s under an arrangement which promised to share the oil revenues with the government and also have a fair sharing process between the Nigerian federal government and the localities, like the Niger Delta, from where the oil was being taken. Early on representatives from the Niger Delta areas began to voice concerns that their allocation for social needs and for political representation were not going to be met. A later military coup took away all hopes Delta peoples had for a fair share of oil funds, as the federal government took most of the oil revenue for themselves and nationalized the land and mineral resources of those communities without consulting the people affected. Further, the oil companies had a bad record on environmental measures, with oil spills and burning  that has severely damaged the fragile delta ecosystem. All this led to civil unrest and protests which were met with a brutal hand by the Nigerian government being pressured by the oil companies to take some action.

So militant groups like MEND (Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta) begin blowing up pipelines and draining oil out of them to fund their fight against the government and the oil companies. They have also engaged in some high profile hostage-taking to help make the world notice their situation. Well, MEND did get attention, but the wrong kind, as the Western, pro-business press labeled them as terrorists. In fact ABC, which got information and film footage from the Sweet Crude team, put out a story on the Niger Delta which twisted the facts and was unsympathetic to the people’s movement in the Niger Delta. So the battle goes on. Meanwhile, with the flows of Nigerian oil are now no longer a certainty, and gasoline prices around the world spike every now and then when the Niger Delta situation takes a turn for the worse.

Socially Responsible Business: Some Solutions

The collective power and reach of the world’s transnational corporations would seem to make remedies next to impossible. But we have to keep in mind that these are still institutions run by humans who are in varying degrees open to reason. Further, we should never underestimate the power of the people, and especially of ideas whose time has come.  All the issues I address about corporate structure and irresponsibility have now come into the light through a highly diverse group of academics, current and former business leaders and economists, government officials and millions of people all over the world. Perhaps the “poster child” for the complaint against big business is the anti-globalization movement which is world-wide, enabled by digital technologies and successful at making its many voices heard through high-profile protests. Anti-globalization, grid-lock politics, political corruption, environmental decay, the tragedy of Katrina victims, global warming, the chaos and injustices in Iraq—slowly more and more people are beginning to connect the dots and see patterns in the misery around the world—and big business and corrupted politics is one of the faces they are seeing.

Global Civil Society

 Many say the “Battle  in Seattle” is the public debut of what is known the contemporary global civil society movement.  Over the course of three days beginning November 30, 1999, a civil protest was mounted to speak out against the erosion of human rights, environmental health, democratic governance, media freedoms, economic security and a host of ills brought on by globalization—the consolidation of power in corporate hands, aided by the policies of international organizations like the World Trade Organization (WTO).  Farmers, union laborers, native tribal members, students, church leaders, environmentalists and social activists from such far away places as France, India, Australia, Japan, South America—as well as from all over the USA—converged on Seattle at the occasion of the WTO ministerial conference, which was to launch a new round of trade negations. The people who came represented one of the most diverse assemblies of interests seen in modern times, all with one mind and purpose. That was to fight against the inhuman aspects of global trade and corporate irresponsibility which had been causing havoc around the world, and which was being empowered by organizations like the WTO whose international agreements overturned national laws that benefit people and the environment.

Global civil society is a social expression of the awakening of an authentic planetary culture grounded in the common spiritual aspirations and social experience of hundreds of millions of people. http://www.pcdf.org/civilsociety/default.htm. The downside of unbridled corporate power affecting communities and people in similar ways gave millions from radically different cultures, languages and backgrounds a common enemy and cause.  From the newsworthy disruption of the WTO conference in Seattle, other protests were staged at future WTO meetings as well as related gatherings like the G8, or the international forum of leading governments including Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

This show of solidarity strengthened the spread of other global gatherings, leading among which are the World Social Forums, giving birth to many regional social forums around the globe. The dream of “another world is possible” became the slogan of a movement which, in spite of its small size, remembers that all the biggest changes in history came from the small seeds of ordinary people doing great things together. 

First appearing in Porto Allegre, Brazil (2001), the World Social Forum (WSF) is not just located in one place (http://www.portoalegre2002.org/homepage.asp), but was always conceived of as a world movement. It has taken place in Mumbai, India (2004), where the attendance grew to 100,000 people. Decentralized events then happened in Venezuela, Mali and Pakistan in 2006, with the 2007 event occurring in Nairobi, Kenya. The first of fourteen points in the WSF Charter read much like the Earth Charter mentioned earlier: “The World Social Forum is an open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and interlinking for effective action, by groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neoliberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a planetary society directed towards fruitful relationships among Humankind and between it and the Earth.”

http://www.portoalegre2002.org/default.asp

Sustainable, Green Business Movement                                                                      

the Natural Step                                                   

http://www.naturalstep.org/com/nyStart/

The Natural Step is an initiative now in 11 countries, including the USA which helps companies to learn a new model of successful business based on social and envinronmental responsibility. They offer lectures, workshops, business analysis, networking, and tools like ecological footprint measurement which help businesses to become more mindful of their social and environmental impacts. TNS aren’t just do-gooders, but offer valuable services and perspectives which can save companies money through things like re-design of workflows, energy reduction and better purchasing strategies. TNS writes that “The science based TNS Framework helps you to solve problems in a way that avoids new problems, develop your vision and core values within a framework for social and ecological sustainability, refresh your vision in a step-by-step way while doing good business and finally, but not least important it helps you bring soul to your business.” 

Green Products Market

EcoBusinessLinks-Green Directory                                      

http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/

Growing consumer awareness of environmental destruction has given birth to entire new industries and markets for eco-friendly products. There are very few product areas that do not have environmentally-oriented options, from recycled paper products, natural soaps, organic ice cream, eco-jewelry, paper towels, floor cleaners, cars, solar ovens, and perhaps most importantly things like hybrid, high-mileage cars with less C02 impact. Alternative energy systems—like solar, wind and ocean-thermal—are all forerunners of what will become the network of energy alternatives that will power our future.

Ownership to the People

Puget Community Cooperative (PCC)                                        http://www.pccnaturalmarkets.com

There has been a strong movement over the last thirty years for member and employee ownership of companies which addresses the problems of absentee ownership by stockholders whose main concern is financial return. While ownership by local stakeholders does not guarantee that a business will be socially or environmentally responsible, their structure makes them open to the voice of the people they serve. An excellent example where I live in Puget Sound, Washington is PCC, or Puget Community Cooperative which is the nation’s largest natural foods coop. PCC supports local sustainable farming, farmland preservation, sustainable seafood and fair trade goods.  They offer things like cooking classes, home delivery, car sharing discounts for people who want to use low C02 emission “flex-cars” to carry groceries (flex-cars are group-leased cars which people use only as they need). In other parts of the USA, worker owned firms, community-owned enterprises plus state and national enterprises  have likewise put wealth and control in the hands of the public. In Newark, NJ a non-profit neighborhood corporation employees 2000 people to build and manage housing and run a supermarket and other businesses that funnel profits back into health care, job creation, education and other community services. In Glasgow Kentucky, the city runs a quality cable, telephone and Internet service at costs far lower than commercial rivals. In Harrisburg, Virginia, a highly successful company owned by employees makes and sells cable television testing equipment. In Alabama the state pension fund owns a major interest in many small and large businesses. In Alaska, every resident receives dividends from a fund that invests in oil revenues on behalf of the public at large. 

Microcredit Enterprise: Poverty Reduction

Grameen Bank

http://www.grameen-info.org

Fighting Poverty

http://www.povertyfighters.com/stories/show/91

Outside the USA, we have seen the tremendous growth of micro-credit enterprises, or small, individually run businesses which got started from from small loans by banks like the Grameen Bank. Started in Bangladesh by 2006 Nobel Peace prize recipient Muhammad Yunus, Grameen Bank makes loans to the poorest of people who could never qualify for conventional credit, but who Yunus knew to be honest, hard-working people. A typical example of small loans for business is Violet Mutoto who lives in one of the poorest areas of Eastern Uganda and who participates in the Credit with Education program that uses village banking to offer small cash loans to groups of women along with health and business education during weekly meetings. With her loans Violet was able to start a small store which sells cooking oil, cassava flour, salt, cheese, biscuits, sugar, malaria pills, and other items. She makes between $5-$10/day in profit and has saved over $100 in case of emergencies. The numbers of people reached through micro-credit is small but growing. As of January 2007, Grameen Bank alone had made loans to almost 7 million people, through 2,343 branches, providing services to 75, 359 villages covering more than 905 of the villages in Bangladesh. A report by Muhammed Yunus in 2001 showed that micro-credit enterprises altogether had reached upwards of 54 million people with a proven record of reducing poverty, hunger and crime.

Fair Trade: For Justice and Dignity

 International Fair Trade Association

http://www.ifat.org

Exploitation of peoples in the southern hemisphere—like coffee growers in south America, or cotton cotton farmers in India—has become a severe problem as globalization put pressure on