2. The ICC & the Environment: Mastering Corporate Environmentalism (Corporate Europe Observer)

3. High Time for UN to Break 'Partnership' with the ICC (CorpWatch)

4. Ecology & Politics in the Age of Globalization (Joshua Karliner, The Corporate Planet)

The tenth anniversary meeting of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro will take place in September 2002 in Johannesburg, South Africa. In stark contrast with the optimism with which citizens' movements initially viewed the first Summit, expectations are low for the "World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD)". In the nine years that have passed since Rio, corporations and their lobby groups have perfected their greenwash skills, convincing governments and global bodies to allow them to operate increasingly unregulated in the global market. They have successfully managed to promote the primacy of 'free trade' agreements over environmental and social treaties. In the run-up to Johannesburg next year, a large-scale business campaign is on the way to consolidate these gains and ward off the backlash against the neoliberal global economic model. Corporate greenwash and co-optation efforts will reach unprecedented levels.

The Earth Summit

The 1992 UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, nearly ten years ago, was a milestone in the global environmental debate. On the positive side, important linkages were made between destructive processes such as climate change, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, global trade, unregulated corporate investment, consumption, production, debt accumulation and structural adjustment. What was sorely lacking, however, was satisfactory concrete outcome. This lack of progress on what most view as urgent and life-threatening global issues can largely be attributed to the full-force and strategic participation of transnational corporations in the Earth Summit process from start to finish.

Industry learned a lot from the Earth Summit, and the meeting marked a critical turning point for the involvement of corporations in the global debate about environment and sustainable development. Until the early 1990s, corporate lobbying took place mainly on the national level, and the public in many countries viewed industry as "dirty" and largely to blame for environmental pollution. Corporate lobby groups saw the Earth Summit as a prominent platform from which to redefine their role, and more importantly, from which to shape the emerging debate on environment and development. At the time, idealistic NGOs imagined the Earth Summit as a vehicle for far-reaching curbs on corporations, but the reality was that business emerged with no binding rules or regulations to hinder their environmentally and socially damaging activities. The only reference to transnational corporations in Agenda 21, one of the main outcomes from the Summit, was an acknowledgement of the role of industry in sustainable development.

Business Council for Sustainable Development and the ICC

How did this astonishing transformation of the image and role of industry in the quest for sustainable development come about? In 1990, Swiss industrialist Stephan Schmidheiny created the Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD) under the influence of his friend Maurice Strong, Secretary-General of the Earth Summit (which was just then beginning its preparatory work). Schmidheiny, whose riches were derived mainly from his Swatch company specializing in watches and asbestos investments, in turn convinced 48 business leaders from major corporations all over the world to come together to form the BCSD.[1]

These companies, working together with the International Chamber of Commerce (which also latched onto Earth Summit preparations at an early stage), successfully promoted their agenda of 'free markets', new technology and economic growth as essential to promoting sustainable development. The BCSD was an important financier of the Earth Summit, and individual companies were involved in various projects including "Earth Summit kits" created by Coca-Cola for every elementary school in the English-speaking world, and Volkswagen cars contributed for use by Summit staff and delegates.

Ten Years Down the Road

The official task of the WSSD is to assess progress since the 1992 Earth Summit and to make recommendations for new ways to tackle the ongoing global crises in environment and economic development. Organisers are frank about the lack of progress since Rio. The preparatory body for Rio+10, the Commission for Sustainable Development (CSD), recently stated "many of the global indicators of sustainable development show little improvement or a continuing decline over the past 10 years. … Poverty has grown, fresh water and secure food supplies are not available to all, and the gap between rich and poor has widened."[2]

A series of national, subregional and regional "grassroots" meetings has already begun to discuss strategies for turning "general concepts" of development and environmental protection into "concrete plans for action," according to the chairman of the Summit preparatory body. [3] Stakeholder dialogues are also being held around the world in another attempt to make the WSSD process inclusive, and consultations will be held with sectors including youth, indigenous people, women and business. Over 50,000 delegates are expected to participate in the Johannesburg conference.

Business is happy with the "multi-stakeholder model" that will be used in the preparatory process for Rio+10. This not only ensures business a seat at the table and provides it with a basic legitimacy, but also offers it "a more positive space to interface with stakeholders including governments".[3]

The decentralised process and the prominent role of stakeholders "leaves the process for agenda-setting at WSSD 2002 in the hands of those […] that have the highest commitment and capacity to get involved", as a business lobbyist points out.[4]

Business in Action Again

The victors at the last Earth Summit, the ICC and the BCSD (which was reorganised and renamed the World Business Council for Sustainable Development or WBCSD in 1995), had already begun to prepare for Rio+10 in the Autumn of 1999, long before many environmental NGOs.[5] The WBCSD leadership established a special task force to prepare 'a bold, forward-looking and practical business plan' for Rio+10.[6] Among the "products" that will be used in the WBCSD's strategy towards Rio+10 are a series of high- profile reports, of which the first - "Sustainability Through the Market" - was released in April. Throughout the spring and summer, the WBCSD is publishing a series of sponsored sections in the prestigious International Herald Tribune, two full pages each time, titled "The Business Case for Sustainable Development".[7] The ten ads, preaching the WBCSD gospel of achieving 'sustainable development' through new technology and other voluntary business initiatives, are sponsored by ABB, Shell, Aventis, Tokyo Electric Power Company and a dozen other major transnational corporations. In the run-up to Rio+10, the WBCSD has also launched five new projects, including "Mining, Metal and Sustainable Development" and "Sustainable Mobility". The projects, which involve many corporations with a record of seriously unsustainable activities, are centered around a series of "stakeholder dialogues" with NGOs and international institutions.[8] The US-based Project Underground and many other organizations have already registered their concern. In a statement entitled "Sustainability means less mining, not more", the groups describe the WBCSD's initiative to create a definition of "sustainable mining" as "a major greenwashing offensive in the effort for [the mining industry] to be part of the sustainable development plans at next year 's Rio+10 conference".[9] According to Danny Kennedy of Project Underground, these activities "aim to co-opt the very notion of sustainability".

The ICC is a very active participant in the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), the body which monitors the implementation of the Rio commitments and which is preparing Rio+10. The lobby group sent no less than 80 delegates to the latest CSD's session in April 2001, which included a multi- stakeholder dialogue on energy and transport.[10] The ICC's PR machine, using its website and newspaper advertisements, is stepping up its (ab)use of the Global Compact between the UN and international business.[11] The Global Compact, first launched by Kofi Annan in January 2000, is based on an entirely non-binding set of environmental, social and human rights principles. The total absence of monitoring and enforcement mechanisms makes the Compact an ideal greenwash instrument in the run-up to Rio+10. Seriously concerned about the credibility of the UN, the "Alliance for a Corporate Free UN", a growing coalition of NGOs, calls for a halt to the flawed partnership with corporations and business lobby groups.[12]

Enter Business Action for Sustainable Development

To combine their efforts, the ICC and the WBCSD have recently established a new joint vehicle: Business Action for Sustainable Development (BASD). Launched at a press conference at the UN in New York in April, the BASD is "aimed at rallying the collective forces of world business in the lead up to next year's Earth summit".[13] The new body will be lead by Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, the freshly retired chairman of Royal Dutch/Shell, a company that has pushed the frontiers of greenwash further than any other in recent years.[14] Moody- Stuart is enthusiastic about the new initiative, saying that "the aim is… to ensure that the world business community is assigned its proper place at the Summit and its preparations, and that we are seen to be playing a progressive and constructive role, with a business-like emphasis on action and an openness to partnership."[15]

"Put simply, our message going into the Earth Summit in 2002 is that business is part of the solution," Moody- Stuart explains.[16] The first major meeting of the new body will be held in Paris in October.[17] Many NGOs and citizen's groups around the world are justifiably sceptical about the prominent role that industry is taking in the preparations for Rio+10. Regarding the initiators of Business Action for Sustainable Development (BASD), Kenny Bruno of the US- based CorpWatch said, "These are the same discredited companies that attempted to greenwash themselves at the first Earth Summit in Rio, and have been slowing down environmental progress ever since."[18]

What Industry Wants from Rio +10

The mantra continuously repeated by industry is that it has fundamentally changed during the last few decades and is in the process of solving the world's environmental problems. The WBCSD's executive director, Bjorn Stigson, insists that it is not corporations but the consumers who are the problem today. "We believe that business knows how to tackle the production issues in the future via concepts like EcoEfficiency", says Stigson. "The consumption side is much more difficult."[19] The European employers' federation UNICE even asserts that industry has achieved the "dematerialisation of the economy".[20] Claiming that industry has already done what it should in reducing its environmental impacts, UNICE argues that business has "therefore earned the right to take a greater share of responsibility for the environment - far beyond command and control".[21]

"Command and control" is the standard phrase used by lobby groups like ICC, WBCSD and UNICE to describe "authoritarian instruments" like binding targets and enforceable social or environmental regulations. Based on their claims of commitment to 'sustainable development', corporations argue that voluntary action and self- regulation by industry is all that is required to safeguard environmental and social progress. Disturbingly, TNCs and their lobby groups are increasingly successful in lobbying for business- friendly 'solutions' rather than binding rules through international environmental negotiations. Take for example the UN climate negotiations, where corporate lobbying has pushed business- friendly pseudo-solutions (voluntary action, global emissions trading, etc.) to the centre stage, corrupting and seriously undermining the potential effectiveness of the Kyoto Protocol.[22] One of the key reasons why corporate lobby groups are investing so heavily in the Rio+10 process is precisely to consolidate government support for 'free- market environmentalism'. As the WBCSD's Bjorn Stigson asks in a recent speech on Rio+10: "Will the trend towards the market economy continue and can we make markets function in a more sustainable way or will we see a return to more command and control and big government to handle the sustainable development issues?".[23]

The Johannesburg summit will evaluate the implementation of the commitments made at the Earth Summit ten years ago, but it will also assess major new trends impacting the environment and development, including economic globalisation and new technologies like IT and biotechnology. A serious assessment would clearly reveal how the unjust and unsustainable global economic system that has emerged is a fundamental obstacle to solving the global environmental and social crisis. So the nightmare scenario for business is that the ever-growing critique of corporate- led globalisation will set the tone for Rio+10. The backlash, which has given rise to protests against the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank, challenges the logic of leaving crucial issues like environment and social progress to the global market and its corporate players. Business is very well aware that, as Stigson puts it, "an international questioning is beginning about the role and function of the free markets".[24]

"Multi-Stakeholder Dialogues"

It is clear that Rio+10 will be the scene of a clash between the business world and numerous progressive groups from around the world who argue that TNCs and their political agenda are accelerating the global ecological and social crisis. Some NGOs, however, may not be so quick to highlight the problematic role played by industry in the Rio+10 preparations. In fact, some NGOs are de facto assisting corporate attempts to greenwash neoliberal globalisation. They do this not only by failing to maintain a healthy critical distance to business, but also engaging in models of cooperation that help TNCs convey the much desired image of responsible 'global corporate citizens'.

"Dialogue with civil society" - or rather with parts of it - is central to corporate strategies for Rio+10. The WBCSD, for instance, has in the last five years stepped up its use of "stakeholder dialogues". The lobby group has organised a series of international meetings with selected NGOs, events that resulted in recommendations suspiciously close to those of the WBCSD. An example is last year's "Global Dialogue on Markets", which concluded that what is needed to pursue sustainable development is "ways to create markets, where no markets currently exist, or to make existing markets operate more effectively".[25] The WBCSD website does not clarify which NGOs attended these events - and let themselves be used to legitimise the WBCSD discourse - but they are obviously not the kind of groups involved in challenging the WTO and neoliberal globalisation in general. A good guess is IUCN, WWF and WRI, major environmental NGOs with which the WBCSD has built up good relations over the years.[26] Dialogue between NGOs and business is also promoted by structures like the UK-based UNED Forum, a "multi- stakeholder NGO … which has promoted outcomes from the first Earth Summit in 1992 and is now working on preparations for Earth Summit 2002". Both the WBCSD and the ICC are actively involved as UNED partners.[27] It is therefor hardly surprising that UNED receives funding from Novartis and British Petroleum. Another example of how some NGOs are embracing business in the preparations for Rio+10 is the "European Rio+10 coalition".[28] In this "tripartite strategic process", the WBCSD is a member, alongside with groups like the International Coalition for Development Action (ICDA), WWF, the European Movement and European Partners for the Environment.

Reality Checks

The partnership model assumes that lobby groups like the WBCSD and the ICC are genuinely committed to the environment and social justice, but this is basically a misconception. Their 'free-market environmentalism' tends to be limited to technological fixes, which include harmful technologies like nuclear energy and genetic engineering. Despite their carefully nurtured green image, in UN negotiations on climate change, toxic waste and numerous other pressing global ecological problems, the WBCSD and the ICC are systematically lobbying against effective rules to ensure environmental progress. Their real priorities are to defend the expansion of the business-friendly global trade and investment rules currently in place and to avoid moves towards effective social and ecological regulation of corporations and the global economy. The promotion of voluntary action and self-regulation as alternatives, wrapped in an increasingly sophisticated use of 'sustainable development' discourse, is in fact wholly irresponsible. Almost a decade after the Rio Earth Summit, it is patently clear that voluntary industry initiatives fall far short of what is required to alleviate problems, not to speak of the flaws of corporate self- regulation. One of the most recent examples of this is the complicity of European oil companies, including self- proclaimed environmental and social front-runner BP, in serious human rights violations in Sudan.[29] Continued violations of environmental, labour and human rights by transnational corporations, including numerous members of the WBCSD and ICC, underline the fact that business is very much part of the problem. Enforceable international rules to control corporations and empower local communities are a much needed part of the solution.

"Sustainability Through the Market" or How to Profit from the Poor?

The business lobby towards Rio+10 claims that trade and investment liberalisation will increase economic growth and benefit the world's poorest people. The reality is that the proposed policies of "integrating the poorest in the global market" in many cases lead to further social marginalisation. Explaining the "Sustainability through the Market" philosophy at an international business conference last year, Peter R. White of the WBCSD outlined how business can help by "providing appropriately priced products that meet basic needs".[30] Using a concrete example of how this could work for his own company, Proctor & Gamble, White explained that P&G would "provide individual use portions of products, since many may not be able to afford a large volume pack." Rather than reducing the price of the product, all P&G would do is to enable the poorest to try out the product in a small quantity which they could maybe afford occasionally. Clearly this has nothing to do with poverty alleviation, but reveals the superficiality and the cynical reality behind the WBCSD's use of the term sustainability.

OFFICIAL

Rio +10 Website www.earthsummit2002.org

INDUSTRY

World Business Council for Sustainable Development
 (WBCSD) www.wbcsd.org

International Chamber of Commerce
 (ICC) www.iccwbo.org

European Partners for the Environment www.epe.be

ORGANISATIONS

CorpWatch www.corpwatch.org

Friends of the Earth International www.foei.org

ICC Step-Up Counter Campaign Against Critics of Corporate-Led Globalisation www.xs4all.nl/~ceo/observer7/icc.html

Campaign for a Corporate-Free UN www.xs4all.nl/~ceo/observer7/un.html

UN-Business 'Partnerships' www.xs4all.nl/~ceo/observer6/ceobs06-09.html

Toothless UN Website on Global Compact with TNCs www.xs4all.nl/~ceo/observer6/ceobs06-10.html

The Global Compact: The UN's New Deal with 'Global Corporate Citizens' www.xs4all.nl/~ceo/observer5/global.html

UNDP and TNCs: Integrating Two Billion People into the Global Economy? www.xs4all.nl/~ceo/observer3/general.html#UNDP

The Geneva Business Dialogue: Business, WTO and UN Joining Hands to Regulate the Global Economy? www.xs4all.nl/~ceo/observer2/gbd.html

United Nations Under Siege www.xs4all.nl/~ceo/observer1/un.html

Nestlé and the United Nations: Partnership or Penetration? www.xs4all.nl/~ceo/observer1/nestle.html

World Business Council Sustainable Development www.xs4all.nl/~ceo/observer0/wbcsd.html

1: For a detailed analysis, see for instance: 'The Earth Power, Politics and World Development', Pratap Chatterjee and Matthias Finger, London: Routledge, 1994. For background on the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), see 'Exploiting Sustainability', chapter 16 in 'Europe, Inc. - Regional & Global Restructuring and the Rise of Corporate Power', Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), published by Pluto Press, January 2000.

2: International Environmental Reporter, Volume 24, Number 10, 9 May 2001.

3: 'Felix Dodds, "Rio+10 and Beyond', speech at Euro Environment 2000, Aalborg, October 18, 2000.

4: Claude Fussler of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development in 'What's at Stake at the Summit?', International Herald Tribune April 12 2001; the article was part one of "Business & the Rio Decade", a ten-part series of sponsored sections published in the International Herald Tribune.

5: 'Felix Dodds, "Rio+10 and Beyond', speech at Euro Environment  2000, Aalborg, October 18, 2000. | Back to Text

6: 'The Road from Rio to Johannesburg', International Herald Tribune April 12 2001.

7: 'Business & the Rio Decade', a ten-part series of sponsored sections published in the International Herald Tribune. The first four sections appeared on April 12, April 26, May 10 and May 24th 2001.

8: 'Mining, Metal and Sustainable Development' is a "two-year project of participatory analysis seeking to understand how the mining and minerals sector can contribute to the global transition to sustainable development." See also www.iied.org/mmsd/index.html "Sustainable Mobility" aims to "assess the global impacts of current transportation modes (land, sea and air) and to develop visions of future mobility." See also www.wbcsdmobility.org/

9: "Sustainability means less mining, not more", 'Statement to the UN Environment Program Regarding the Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development Initiative', www.moles.org/ProjectUnderground/campaigns/mmsdi0104.html

10: Business will feed environmental expertise to UN", www.iccwbo.org/sdchater/news_archives/2001/stakehol der.asp (accessed April 26 2001).

11: On its website, the ICC presents numerous brief stories of isolated, non-verifiable initiatives, however insignificant and unrepresentative of the companies record, as proof of 'corporate citizenship': www.iccwbo.org/home/menu_global_compact.asp
... to Davos 2001, the ICC sponsored a special four-page section of the International Herald Tribune, on the Global Compact. "The Global Compact - Business and the UN", sponsored section in the International Herald Tribune, January 25 2001.

12: See also www.corpwatch.org/un/

13: 'Business gears up for Earth Summit with launch of new initiative', WBCSD website, www.wbcsd.org/ (accessed May 25 2001). The BASD is not intended as a new organisation, but will be a vehicle used only in the run-up to and during the Earth Summit II. It is "simply an initiative which has the life span of the period leading up to the Second Earth Summit". 'Business gears up for Earth Summit with launch of new initiative', ICC website, www.iccwbo.org/home/news_archives/2001/basd.asp (accessed April 24th 2001).

14: 'Business gears up for Earth Summit with launch of new initiative', ICC website, www.iccwbo.org/home/news_archives/2001/basd.asp (accessed April 24th 2001). On Shell's greenwash efforts, see for instance the nomination of Shell for the Corporate Watch Earth Day 2000 Greenwash Award www.igc.org/trac/climate/gwshell.html

15: Moody-Stuart quoted by Jack Whelan, International Chamber of Commerce, 'Statement by business and industry to the 10th Session, UN Commission on Sustainable Development', April 30 2001.

16: BASD website, www.iccwbo.org/sdcharter/basd/basd.asp

17: The Business Strategy Meeting will take place in Paris October 9-10, attended by "business leaders from all over the world". The meeting "will set the agenda for business and sustainable development in the run-up to Johannesburg". "Business Action for Sustainable Development (BASD)", International Chamber of Commerce website
www.iccwbo.org/sdcharter/basd/basd.asp (accessed April 24th 2001).

18: "NGOs Vow to Scrutinize Business Plans for Earth Summit II", Alliance for a Corporate-Free UN press release, April 19th 2001, www.corpwatch.org/press/un/pr/2001/basd.html

19: Bjorn Stigson, 'Visions, Strategies and Actions towards Sustainable Industries', speech at Euro Environment 2000, Aalborg, October 18, 2000.

20: UNICE's Cynthia Wolsdorf asserts that corporations have "done their homework" and "learned to set their own priorities and targets and to monitor their achievement". Cynthia Wolsdorf, "New policy approach towards sustainable industries", speech at Euro Environment 2000, Aalborg, October 18, 2000.

21: Ibid.

22: 'Greenhouse Market Mania - UN climate talks corrupted by corporate pseudo-solutions', CEO briefing, November 2000; www.xs4all.nl/~ceo/greenhouse/

23: "What we have witnessed lately in Seattle, Bangkok, Melbourne and Prague is underlining this concern." Bjorn Stigson, "Visions, Strategies and Actions towards Sustainable Industries", speech at Euro Environment 2000, Aalborg, October 18, 2000.

24: Ibid.

25: The 'Global Dialogue on Markets' took place during Expo2000, July 2000 in Hannover, Germany. Peter R. White, "Sustainability Through the Market: Making Markets Work for Everyone", speech at Euro Environment 2000, Aalborg, October 18, 2000.

26: 'World Business Council for Sustainable Development: the Greening of Business or a Greenwash?', Adil Najam, printed in 'Yearbook of International Co-operation on Environment and Development 1999/2000', Earthscan, London.

27: See also: www.earthsummit2002.org/es/partners/europe.htm

28: The "European Rio+10 coalition" is initiated by the European Movement and European Partners for the Environment. See also www.epe.be/

29: TotalFinaElf, OMV, Lundin and BP are among the TNCs are among the European-based TNCs directly or indirectly involved in oil exploitation in Sudan, thereby fueling the government's displacement campaign and civil war. BP's involvement is indirect, through its co-ownership of PetroChina, one of the main oil extractors in Sudan. "The Regulatory Void - European company involvement in human rights violation's in Sudan's oil fields", Christian Aid briefing, May 2001, www.christian-aid.org.uk/indepth/0105suda/sudan.htm

30: Peter R. White  'Sustainability Through the Market: Making Markets Work for Everyone', speech at Euro Environment 2000, Aalborg, October 18, 2000.

The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), one of the most influential industry groups in the world, has over the last ten years developed and aggressively promoted the notion of 'corporate environmentalism'. The ICC has been very successful in promoting the idea that global market liberalisation and industry self-regulation over government intervention is the key to sustainable development. It has forged close ties with various international institutions and United Nations bodies, and has left its forceful and decidedly unsustainable mark on both the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and the 1997 Kyoto Climate Convention.

"Corporate environmentalism is the melding of ecological and economic globalisation into a coherent ideology that has paved the way for the transnationals to reconcile, in theory and rhetoric, their ubiquitous hunger for profits and growth with the stark realities of poverty and environmental destruction." ---- Joshua Karliner, The Corporate Planet

Developing the Doctrine of Corporate Environmentalism

The foundations of corporate environmentalism were laid in the 1980s. The doctrine was further developed and refined in the years leading up to the 1992 Rio 'Earth Summit' (or UNCED, the UN Conference on Environment and Development), through a series of strategy meetings, forums and conferences. In 1991, the ICC launched its non-binding Business Charter for Sustainable Development, seeking to promote the concept of industry self-regulation: the solution to save the planet lies in environmentally responsible corporations operating within a free-market system.

The environmental work of the ICC has been always closely intertwined with the Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD), created in 1990 by Swiss industrialist Stephan Schmidheiny, upon the request of his friend Maurice Strong, Secretary-General of UNCED. As part of the preparations for the Rio 'Earth Summit', the ICC and the BCSD effectively sidelined the UN Centre on Transnational Corporations (UNCTC). This former UN body, responsible for developing a UN Code of Conduct for TNCs, had been asked for input into Agenda 21, the environmental action program agreed upon at the Earth Summit. In the end, Agenda 21's chapter on business closely followed the doctrine of corporate environmentalism, and a debate on the need for international regulation of corporations was skilfully avoided. In retrospect, one may conclude that the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio was largely captured by the global business lobby. This corporate hijacking of the UNCED process drastically slowed down global progress in the areas of environment and development over the 1990s.

Institutionalising Greenwash: The ICC and the WBCSD

In 1992, the ICC created the World Industry Council for Environment (WICE), with the goal of involving industry in the Earth Summit follow-up process. In 1995, WICE merged with the BCSD, to form the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). WICE's head, Rodney Chase, then a managing director of British Petroleum, became the chair of WBCSD, and Asea Brown Boveri's Björn Stigson, became Executive Director. The WBCSD soon evolved into the dominant business voice on sustainable development and the environment. Its voice was supported by the ICC which also continued to promote the doctrine of corporate environmentalism.

Since the Earth Summit, the ICC has established strong links with various UN agencies that deal with the environment. One of the most prominent of these is with the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) which was created in 1992 to ensure effective follow-up of UNCED and monitor and report on the implementation of the Rio agreements. As ICC's secretary-general Maria Livanos Cattaui put it at her speech at the opening session of the sixth CSD Conference, in 1998, "This critically important session, in which industry has been chosen as the first stakeholder group for direct dialogue with the CSD, marks a true watershed in relations between the United Nations and the great diversity of business and industry I represent today." The ICC's glossy reports and speeches delivered at the CSD focus on a careful selection of minor environmental success stories from ICC member companies in areas such as environmental management, technology cooperation and water management.

Other environmental bodies of the United Nations have also come under intense lobbying pressure from the ICC. Cooperation between the ICC and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) is well established, and the fruits of that union include regular joint reports, projects and programmes. The latest event will take place at the upcoming ICC world congress in Budapest, Hungary, on May 3-5 2000, where UNEP's executive director Klaus Töpfer and ICC's President Adnan Kassar will give the ICC/UNEP Corporate Environmental Management Award to one of the fifteen nominated corporations.

The ICC has also been on top of the negotiations spawned by the Earth Summit which led to the Climate Convention and the Biodiversity Protocol, developing strategies to turn both processes into the direction most beneficial for the corporations that constitute the ICC. Allying themselves with governments resisting these treaties and lobbying those that made efforts to address global environmental problems, it has successfully lobbied for the adoption of business-friendly 'solutions' to global warming and prevented weakening of intellectual property rights granted to corporations under the WTO TRIPs Agreement.

Challenging the ICC's Corporate Environmentalism

The ICC has managed to portray some of the most reprehensible companies in the world as the biggest promoters of sustainable development, dogmatically insisting that environmental protection can only be achieved through economic growth, self-regulation and free markets. Most worrying of all, the ICC's privileged access to decision-makers has enabled the organisation to take the sting out of the sustainable development debate and avoid policy measures that could endanger 'business as usual'. Moreover, the ICC tries to sell the illusion that continued trade and investment liberalisation, such as embodied in the WTO agreements or the failed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), are a prerequisite for sustainable development. Behind the myth of self-regulation is a naked attempt by transnational corporations to control the global environmental debate before public pressure forces them to face governmental regulations. Such corporate greenwash has to be unmasked and challenged by groups fighting for social and environmental justice if real change is to be achieved.

Profiting from Climate Change

Faced with the undeniable threat of climate change, the world's governments have been engaged for years in negotiations on international rules to prevent one of the most pressing global environmental problems. Having closely followed and participated in international climate negotiations since the 1992 Climate Convention, the ICC, in partnership with the WBCSD and some UN institutions, has fought to avoid carbon and energy taxes and other regulations that are considered unfriendly for business. After working to ensure that the 1997 Kyoto Protocol enshrined market solutions as the way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the ICC turned its efforts into ensuring that industry can make a good business out of them.

Before the Kyoto negotiations, the ICC followed a classic corporate lobbying strategy. While not denying the existence of climate change as some of the boldest climate lobbies did, the ICC sought to avoid regulations arguing that economic disaster, massive unemployment and loss of competitiveness would ensue if binding commitments for emission reductions were adopted. The ICC also insisted that commitments should be global, including Southern countries, and that the solutions to the problem lied in industry voluntary agreements, market instruments, increased acceptance of nuclear energy and an unimpeded free market permitting the development of new and improved technology. Carbon and energy taxes and other regulations should be avoided at all costs in the name of international competitiveness. In the end they managed to shift the debate from a political decision to regulate industry to one based on technocratic solutions.

During the 1997 climate negotiations in Kyoto, the ICC, in partnership with the WBCSD and the Japanese industry lobby, Keidanren, organised an International Conference on Business Initiatives for Mitigating Climate Change. They claimed that if the responsibility for solving environmental problems were left to them, the result would be the swift introduction of technological improvements to increase energy efficiency. Subsequently, the Kyoto Protocol, the first legally-binding treaty which sets defined limits (though meager) on greenhouse gas emissions, introduced three industry-inspired market-based 'solutions' as the way to achieve the agreed reductions. The three so-called 'flexible mechanisms' of emissions trading, joint implementation (JI) and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), allow industrialised countries and their corporations to trade 'pollution rights'. The main target of the ICC is the CDM, which involves the trading of 'emissions reduction units' obtained in special projects between one industrialised country or corporation and a southern country, aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The Clean Development Mechanism is supposed to facilitate the transfer of funding and technology for energy efficiency measures to Southern countries. However, it also permits TNCs to evade their own climate responsibilities by shifting some of the reduction burden on the South.

On 15-16 October 1998, two weeks before the Buenos Aires Climate Summit, the ICC, together with the WBCSD, sent a 30-person delegation to Dakar, Senegal. The mission, which included representatives from Shell, LaFarge, Texaco, Mobil and Chevron, met with energy and environment ministers from more than 20 African countries in order to tempt them with promises of technology transfer and foreign investment in exchange for their support for the Clean Development Mechanism. Not satisfied with this, the ICC, together with Keidanren, the WBCSD, the US Council for International Business (USCIB), the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), organised in Buenos Aires, a Workshop on Voluntary Initiatives in Climate Change.

Buenos Aires was visited by a 100 member business delegation headed by the ICC. Under pressure of this heavy industry lobby, the negotiations on the implementation of the Kyoto mechanisms ended in a deadlock and the insufficiency of the actual reduction commitments wasn't even addressed. The Buenos Aires Action Plan delayed the adoption of the rules governing the flexible mechanisms to the sixth Conference of the Parties (COP-6), which will take place in The Hague, Netherlands, 13-24 November 2000.

The ICC is making good use of this interlude by heavily lobbying industrialised and developing countries to shape the rules for those commercial escape mechanisms. In the Spring of 1999, the ICC organised a second Dakar meeting bringing together business leaders and Southern governments to press for the Clean Development Mechanism.

Other ICC demands include:
* avoiding any ceiling on the amount of reductions that can be achieved 'abroad';
* that credits obtained in any of the three Kyoto mechanisms can be interchangeable;
* allow self-monitoring of results by industry;
* use exisiting institutions such as regional development banks to control the resulting climate market; and
*ensure that any enforcement measure is in agreement with WTO rules and does not create an investment or trade barrier.

In the run-up to the COP-6, where all these rules are to be set, the International Chamber of Commerce will use all its power to make sure that whatever is decided there will be profitable for global business. Success for the ICC lobby would mean a severe setback for the attempts to counter the looming climate crisis.

The ICC & the WTO TRIPs Agreement

Intellectual property rights are a major issue for the ICC, which has long been campaigning for their inclusion within various institutions. While the ICC uses its environmental rhetoric in the CSD, the UN body in charge of the follow-up of the UNCED agreements including the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD), it has obstructed the implementation of the Convention and the subsequent negotiations for a Biosafety Protocol. The ICC has flexed all of its muscle within the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to introduce, implement and protect the controversial TRIPs Agreement. In the face of a social debate that increasingly questions and challenge TRIPs, life patents and its major corporate beneficiaries, the ICC dogmatically asserts that protection of intellectual property rights, including the patenting of life-forms, is essential for economic growth, stimulates trade and investment and results in the transfer of technologies to developing countries.

Accordingly with these ideas, the ICC joined biotech lobby groups such as Brussels-based EuropaBio, in their efforts to turn around the opinion of the European Parliament on the EU Life Patents Directive. This Directive, which had been fiercely opposed by the European Parliament in 1995, was adopted by the same Parliament in 1998, after what had been one of the biggest and most expensive industry lobby campaigns in Brussels to date.

The next goal for the ICC was the review of article 27.3b of the WTO TRIPs Agreement, scheduled for 1999. Also known as the biodiversity provision, this article allows countries to exclude plants and animals from patentability. While the more aggressive corporate biotech lobbies advocate the expansion of this article to cover all life-forms (so that plants and animals can be patented everywhere), the ICC chose a more diplomatic approach. Concerned about the firm stance taken by Southern countries and civil society groups opposed to life patenting, which could threaten even the limited patenting rights already given to corporations, the ICC does not advocate a new review at this time.

One of the main arguments used by opponents of the TRIPs Agreement is that it only gives weight to the rights of corporations, contravening the Biodiversity Convention, which asserts that local communities should benefit from the use of genetic resources. The ICC tries to make the case that both agreements are totally compatible. However, the ICC shows its teeth when stating in all of its position papers (drafted by a commission headed by the chairman of ICI India, a huge chemical and pharmaceutical TNC not exactly impartial on the issue) that if a conflict is found between TRIPs and the CBD, the ICC "will argue strongly against the weakening of the existing provision of TRIPS."

The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), a lobby group with over 7000 corporate members, is a prominent partner in UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's Global Compact and has played a key role in shaping it from the start.[1] While this alliance has provided momentum to the Global Compact, it also seriously undermines its credibility.

The ICC has a long history of vigorously lobbying to weaken international environmental treaties and these efforts have continued even after the group has pledged support for the Global Compact principles. Examples include the Kyoto Protocol, the Convention on Biodiversity, and the Basel Convention against trade in toxic waste. In all of these UN negotiations, the International Chamber's obstructive lobbying is in direct opposition to the Global Compact principles it has pledged to pursue.
For instance, rather than "supporting a precautionary approach to environmental challenges," Principle 7, and rather than undertaking "initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility," Principle 8,[2] the ICC promotes a narrow corporate agenda, dominated by the commercial interests of some of the world's most environmentally irresponsible corporations-an agenda that often effectively undermines a precautionary approach and basic environmental responsibility.

Shaping The Global Compact

The ICC has been a pioneering member of the Compact. As early as February 1998 a delegation of 25 corporate executives met with Kofi Annan and other senior UN officials and issued a joint statement promising closer collaboration. [3] According to the ICC, "the two groups resolved to form a close global partnership to secure greater input from ICC member companies into the UN's economic decision-making." [4]

The next major step was the ICC's Geneva Business Dialogue in September 1998, which brought together hundreds of captains of industry as well as top-level representatives of UN agencies and other international organizations. The Geneva Business Dialogue called for more "effective" global governance in order to avoid the growing backlash to economic globalization, including a stronger, reformed UN with "a more substantive involvement of business" . [5] In his message to the Geneva Business Dialogue, Annan pledged to "build on the close ties between the UN and the ICC." [6]

In March 1999, the ICC was the first group to officially join the Compact, two months after Kofi Annan first launched the Global Compact in Davos. There are no signs of the relationship cooling down: in a speech to a recent ICC conference, Kofi Annan praised the Chamber as "a highly valued partner of the UN." [7] The UN-ICC partnership is far from limited to the Global Compact: examples of far-reaching joint projects between the ICC and UN agencies include UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

The Global Compact: ICC Greenwash?

According to an ICC fact sheet published on the UN's Global Compact website "the ICC has become a clearinghouse for business contributions to the Global Compact." The group started its own Global Compact website in November 1999, several months before the official UN Global Compact website was launched.

The ICC website consists of a collection of very brief reports on environmental and human rights initiatives by BP-Amoco, Fiat, Unilever and other corporations. The ICC site even includes reports from companies not associated with the Global Compact such as Nestle and BAT. Combined with the UN's secrecy about who is and who is not a member of the Global Compact, this leaves the impression that these highly controversial companies are part of the Compact.

The reports, currently just over 20, are presented as "case studies" of "how the private sector is fulfilling the Compact through corporate actions."[8] The ICC invites companies to submit examples, but does not allow for external comments, for instance from NGOs who might not be convinced by the claims made on the site.

The ICC clearly regards the Global Compact as a public relations tool that it can use however it sees fit. Restating that the Global Compact should stay free of "any monitoring and verification procedure," ICC Vice-President Adnan Kassar explains the ICC's vision: "What the Global Compact does is to assemble a broad picture of company actions that demonstrate corporate citizenship in action in every part of the world." "In the past," Kassar elaborates, such initiatives "were often unnoticed, because they were conducted in isolation."[9]

The ICC's approach of presenting isolated, non-verifiable initiatives, however insignificant and unrepresentative of the companies' record, as proof of 'corporate citizenship', is deeply flawed. For instance, the fact that automobile and arms producer Daimler-Chrysler uses locally produced coconut fibers in a Brazilian factory producing car components says nothing about the company's overall environmental conduct.[10]

The ICC's strategy of highlighting isolated social or environmental initiatives while refusing monitoring of overall corporate conduct has been supported by the UN in other ways. The "Millennium Business Award for Environmental Achievement," initiated by the ICC and the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) is another example.

Among the winners was Interfor, a Canadian logging company targeted by the Forest Action Network for its highly unsustainable environmental practices. Another dubious winner was the Tokyo Electric Power Company, Japan's largest producer of nuclear energy. The company is heavily criticized by environmental groups for destroying 3,000 hectares of native forests on Tasmania and replacing them with fast-growing eucalyptus. The environmental havoc wreaked on Tasmania will earn the Japanese power company carbon credits worth 130,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, allowing it to continue polluting from its Japanese power plants. The company received the UNEP-ICC award for "taking its fight against global climate change and environmental degradation onto the world stage."

Keeping the Global Compact Free of Binding Elements

The ICC's principle interest is using the Global Compact to promote a positive image of transnational corporate behavior. Therefore, it fiercely opposes proposals for binding elements or enforcement mechanisms, claiming that self-regulation will make its members responsible 'global corporate citizens'. ICC Secretary-General Maria Livanos Cattaui, in an opinion piece in International Herald Tribune, explained that "business would look askance at any suggestion involving external assessment of corporate performance."[11] The Global Compact, Cattaui wrote, "must not become a vehicle for governments to burden business with prescriptive regulations."

In the run-up to the 2001World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland, the ICC sponsored a special four-page section of the International Herald Tribune on the Global Compact. In article after article, the ICC repeated the claim that business is voluntarily promoting environment, human rights and social progress around the world, while demanding to keep the Compact "free from 'command and control."[12] ICC president McCormick used the opportunity to stress Annan's promise that the Compact "is not intended to regulate or measure companies' compliance."

The ICC has taken the offensive in countering the world-wide movement against corporate-led globalization. In a statement to last year's G-8 Summit in Japan, the ICC called on powerful governments "to stand firm in rejecting demands by publicly unaccountable, and frequently unrepresentative, external groups seeking to impose such codes on 'multinationals' and claiming the right to pass judgment on companies' compliance with them."[13] The ICC has made such attacks on the legitimacy of non-governmental organizations a standard feature in its efforts to counter the growing criticism of corporate abuse of power around the world.

By arguing that "there is no demonstrable need for further government-mandated detailed rules," the ICC simply ignores the growing body of evidence which proves that leaving the solving of environmental and social problems to voluntary action by industry is wholly unrealistic. The UN's Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), for instance, in a July 2000 report on voluntary environmental initiatives by industry concludes that these "often result in 'non-compliance, double standards, inadequate targets or standards, or greenwashing'."[14]

The ICC sees the Global Compact as a powerful PR tool in the raging ideological battles over economic globalization. Witnessing a growing backlash against the deregulated global economy and the excessive power held by transnational corporations and institutions like the WTO, the ICC is determined to fight back.

Through decades of lobbying, the ICC has itself been instrumental in promoting the set of corporate-biased international trade and investment rules that are currently in place. As a result, the group is in absolute denial about the serious social and ecological problems that are becoming increasingly manifest. Rather than accepting that radical changes in the global economic system are needed, the ICC sees only public "fears and misconceptions" and discusses how to counter what it terms "globaphobia."[15]

As long as it is free of monitoring and enforcement, the Global Compact offers the ICC an ideal tool to improve the image of its member corporations. It is therefore hardly surprising that the ICC is using the Global Compact in its marketing campaign for economic globalization. At its May 2000 World Congress, plans were announced to fully exploit the PR potential of the Compact, including enlisting "the support of international media organizations to make the business response to the Global Compact even more widely known."[16]

Apart from avoiding enforceable elements in the Global Compact, the ICC also wants to keep non-business groups out of the Global Compact. The ICC demands that the Compact "remains a two-way compact between business and the UN," excluding trade unions and NGOs. [17] The UN tends to present the Compact as involving all 'stakeholders', but Cattaui remembers that "the Global Compact was launched as a challenge for business and the UN to work together." "We must make sure other players don't dilute it," she states. In the ICC's vision, NGOs should be excluded from the Global Compact altogether, and should only be involved in dialogue with individual corporations, "at the grassroots level."

The ICC clearly prefers the Global Compact to other UN processes where it has to operate on an equal footing with non-profit civil society groups like NGOs and trade unions. In the UN's Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), for instance, the ICC is one of several 'major groups' of stakeholders that are consulted closely. The Compact brings the ICC a step closer to its ambition of business being granted a privileged position in the UN.[18]

Using the Global Compact to Justify Pulling out of a UN Process

In March 2000 the ICC withdrew from the CSD's Multistakeholder Review of Voluntary Initiatives, an evaluation process created in 1998 by the CSD's sixth session (UNCSD6). In a letter to CSD director JoAnne DiSano, the ICC explained that it felt that its resources "may be allocated to greater effect in other current initiatives we are undertaking with the United Nations."[19] As an example, the ICC mentioned that it "is heavily engaged in the Secretary General's Global Compact project." The Voluntary Initiatives project, the ICC wrote had "progressed as far as it can at the present time."

In fact, the review has not even started yet. Knowing that a review of the effectiveness of voluntary action would reveal dubious practices of numerous ICC member corporations, the ICC lobbied hard during CSD6 to water down the mandate. As a result, the mandate is no more than an "exploration" of the elements of a "potential" review. Still, the ICC felt it was safer to step out. "Any effort to police or monitor voluntary initiatives on an adversarial basis which assumes lack of commitment by industry," the ICC letter stated, "ought not to be supported by us."

Referring to the Global Compact offered the ICC an easy escape route. The Compact's absence of monitoring and enforcement are ideal for the ICC's attempts to escape transparency and accountability. NGOs involved in the CSD's two years of "exploration" hope to convince governments that a review of the effectiveness of voluntary industry initiatives is still desperately needed.

ICC vs. the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change

The ICC's self-regulation mantra comes up in virtually all international negotiations that the lobby group is involved in. This is certainly the case in the UN negotiations on the rules for implementing the Kyoto climate change Protocol where the Chamber continues to lobby against international rules to force corporations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. These efforts are in direct contradiction with the environmental principles of the Global Compact.

With over 100 accredited lobbyists, the ICC was one of the most visible industry lobby groups at the November 2000 UN climate negotiations in The Hague (COP-6).[20] While trying hard to portray itself as environmentally responsible, the ICC's lobbying efforts aimed to undermine the effectiveness of the Kyoto Protocol. In a revealing statement, then ICC Vice-President (current President) Richard McCormick warned against, "a 'quick-fix, look-good' deal that causes a dramatic and costly shift in the way industrialized countries use energy"[21], while such a shift is, of course, exactly what is needed if catastrophic climate change is to be averted.

The ICC's "alternative" to government regulation is voluntary action by industry , plus the dramatic expansion of the role of the Kyoto Protocol's 'market-based mechanisms'. Environmental activists say this would allow corporations numerous, often harmful, ways to escape reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, such as through global emissions trading and the accounting of 'carbon sinks' (carbon absorption via forests, wood products, soil and industrial and genetically modified agriculture).[22]
Far from taking the environmental high road, the ICC plays a coordinating role in all business lobbying at UN negotiations, including daily strategy meetings. The ICC's working group on climate change consists of over 70 lobbyists from European, US and Japanese corporations. Among them are major oil corporations which are openly campaigning against the Kyoto Protocol.

An example is ExxonMobil, whose Brian Flannery was one of the ICC prime spokespeople in The Hague.[23] With his ICC-hat on, Flannery delivered the ICC's rosy "free market environmentalism" discourse to the media. But Flannery also spoke out as lobbyist of ExxonMobil and then the feel-good rhetoric was replaced by questioning the scientific evidence for climate change and making warnings against government investments in green technology.

When the Bush administration withdrew US support for the Kyoto Protocol in March, the ICC was clearly relieved and threw off its green mask. On its website it advertised a new climate initiative from the United States Council for International Business (USCIB), the US affiliate of the ICC. Welcoming the Bush decision, USCIB called for an alternative to the Kyoto Protocol that would avoid its "unrealistic targets, timetables and lack of developing country participation."[24]

ICC vs. Biodiversity and Biosafety Accords

The ICC's lobbying around UN negotiations on global biodiversity is no less out of line with the Global Compact principles. The ICC has systematically obstructed the implementation of the 1992 Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) and the subsequent negotiations for a Biosafety Protocol. Instead, the ICC is uncompromising in its defense of the World Trade Organization's (WTO) controversial rules on intellectual property rights, which are heavily biased towards corporate interests (the Trade Related Intellectual Property -- TRIPs -- Agreement).

The vast majority of developing countries and environmental campaigners have long since pointed out the conflict between the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) and the TRIPs agreement. The CBD assigns sovereignty in matters concerning biological resources, such as plants and seeds, to the countries that possess them (the largest share of the world's biodiversity being in Third World countries). It also states that local communities should benefit from the use of this resource. However, TRIPS weakens such provisions by allowing corporations to patent these resources. The ICC strategy has been to claim that both agreements are totally compatible, while lobbying against any attempt to strengthen the position of the CBD vis-à-vis TRIPs.
The ICC has played a particularly obstructive role at the negotiations for a Biosafety Protocol. This Protocol, adopted in Montreal in January 2000 after years of discussions, provides a legal framework to ensure safety in the transboundary movements of genetically modified organisms. In contradiction to the Global Compact Principle 7, which advocates a "precautionary approach," the ICC has campaigned against the inclusion of the Precautionary Principle into the Protocol. Another major demand was that the business-friendly WTO rules would overrule the Biosafety Protocol -- an environmentally irresponsible, if commercially sound proposition.

The ICC's US branch (the United States Council for International Business -- USCIB) has played a particularly obstructive role in the battle over the biosafety negotiations, through its defense of the commercial interests of the US biotech industry. USCIB, which is also part of the Global Industry Coalition (a group infamous for its extremely aggressive anti-environmental lobby), has worked systematically to prevent the adoption of the Biosafety Protocol. USCIB lobbied the US government to put pressure on the European Union and other governments to change their stance at the negotiations. This alliance, determined to push bioengineered products into foreign markets, managed to disrupt the UN talks in Cartagena in February 1999 and significantly weakened the final Protocol.

ICC vs. The Basel Convention

In direct contradiction with the principles of the Global Compact, the ICC is campaigning against the UN Basel Convention's ban of the export of hazardous waste from the richer industrialized countries (OECD) to developing countries and Eastern Europe (non-OECD countries). The group features prominently in the Basel Action Network's "Hall of Shame."[25] The ban, which was agreed in 1994 after a boom in North to South shipments of dangerous waste in the 1980's, has already had a dramatic impact. Waste trade scandals became rare in the 1990's as governments had de facto implemented the ban, thereby cutting off possibilities for Northern industry to get rid of its waste at low cost. The ban however goes into full legal force only when 62 countries have ratified it.

Meanwhile, the ICC continues to work hard to attack the ban and prevent if from entering into force. According to the Basel Action Network ,the ICC's role has been "very obstructive," ranging from "publishing fact sheets full of erroneous information" to "lobbying vigorously behind the scenes."[26] The ICC's lobbying delegation has been headed by Harvey Alter of the Business Recycling Coalition, which represents US traders in waste metals.[27]

The ICC also tries to undermine the implementation of the ban by promoting various loopholes. One example is the ICC's support for circumventing the ban via bilateral agreements that would allow hazardous waste trade between countries, completely undoing the concept of a strict ban. In the ICC's latest (November 1999) position paper on the Basel Convention, the group has even called for the ban to be stopped by the World Trade Organization (WTO). According to the ICC, the ban on trade in hazardous waste is "trade disruptive" as it "would arbitrarily and unjustifiably discriminate among countries."

The Wrong Partner

Contrary to what it would like the world to believe, the ICC has never been an enlightened or progressive business organization, nor has it become one since joining the Global Compact.

The debate about the social and environmental impacts of economic globalization has never been more intense and it increasingly hones in on the role of transnational corporations. The call for political action to rein-in their economic and political power, for instance through enforceable UN rules on corporate behavior, is gaining strength. The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) is vehemently against such rules. In this debate, the UN leadership has unfortunately chosen the wrong side.

In the next years it will become increasingly apparent (and embarrassing) to the UN that it has chosen the wrong partner. The ICC has already announced that it will use the Global Compact in "preparing the business contribution for the Rio-plus-ten conference in 2002." The ICC will once again promote 'free markets' and corporate self-regulation in a proactive attempt to avoid or water-down civil society demands for policies to counter the accelerating social and environmental crisis. The abuse of the UN's Global Compact will undoubtedly be taken to hitherto unknown heights. Clearly, there is little time left for Kofi Annan to break with the ICC before the UN's credibility suffers permanent damage.

1. "ICC and the Global Compact" on the UN's Global Compact website: accessed May 4th, 2001.

2. See http://www.globalcompact.org for the nine global compact principles.

3. "Joint statement on common interests by the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the International Chamber of Commerce," 9 February 1998.

4. "Global rules needed for a global economy," ICC website: accessed May 4th 2001

5. "The Geneva Business Declaration," 24 September 1998.

6. Message from Kofi Annan, ICC Geneva Business Dialogue, 24 September 1998.

7. How Africans can make the leap to a better life -- Kofi Annan, Abuja, 20 November 2000: accessed May 4th 2001.

8. http://www.iccwbo.org/home/menu_global_compact.asp accessed May 9th 2001.

9. "Taking up the challenge: business and the Global Compact," Adnan Kassar, text distributed during the UN's Millennium summit, 6-8 September 2000.

10. "DaimlerChrysler turns waste coconuts into car seats," Accessed May 9th 2001.

11. "Yes to Annan's 'Global Compact' if It Isn't a License to Meddle," Maria Livanos Cattaui in the International Herald Tribune, July 26 2000.

12. Cattaui in "The Global Compact - Business and the UN," published in "The Global Compact - Business and the UN," sponsored section in the International Herald Tribune, January 25 2001.

13. "Business and the global economy," ICC statement on behalf of world business to the Heads of State and Government attending the Okinawa Summit, 21-23 July 2000.

14. "Business Responsibility for Sustainable Development," Peter Utting, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), June 2000.

15. "The Global Economy: An Opportunity, Not a Threat," The Budapest Business Declaration, ICC, Hungary, 5 May 2000.

16. "ICC steps up counter-campaign against critics of corporate-led globalisation," Corporate Europe Observer, Issue 7, 2000. 

17. "The business of building a better world," published in "The Global Compact - Business and the UN," sponsored section in the International Herald Tribune, January 25 2001.

18. It has long been an ICC ambition to achieve "the treatment of business by the U.N. on a different basis than the conventional NGOs." "Special U.N. General Assembly Session Marking Fifth Anniversary of Rio Conference on Environment and Development Shows Limited Results," USCIB website: Accessed May 9th 2001.

19. Letter from the ICC's Lord Cheltenham to JoAnne DiSano, March 8 2000.

20. COP-6 participants list, see the UN's COP-6 website.

21. Richard D. McCormick, "Charting a New Course for the Environment -- and the Economy," International Herald Tribune, November 18-19, 2000.

22. For a comprehensive overview of the wide range of global equity and environmental problems related to the proposed emissions trading and other market-based "solutions" to climate change, see CEO's November 2000 briefing "Greenhouse Market Mania."

23. ExxonMobil is "firmly against the Kyoto Protocol" because "it achieves very little and costs too much." "Kyoto treaty flawed says top exec of ExxonMobil," Earth Times, November 15, 2000.

24. See http://www.ban.org/hall_shame.html

25. Letter from Jim Puckett, coordinator of the Basel Action Network (BAN), April 16 2001.

26. "Industry Groups Say They Would Support Basel Legislation Under Certain Conditions," International Environment Reporter, June 10 1998.

27. "Executive Summary and Conclusion," High-Level Meeting on the Global Compact, held on July 26, 2000, United Nations Headquarters in New York.

Fact Sheet Number Two - Corporations and the Global Environmental Crisis

"From a global perspective the environment has continued to degrade during the past decade, and significant environmental problems remain deeply embeded in the socio-economic fabric of nations in all regions." ---United Nations Environment Programme, 1997

Corporations at the Roots of the Environmental Crisis

The following is a necessarily incomplete inventory of the corporate role in the global environmental crisis:

* Destruction of the Ozone Layer: Before the Montreal Protocol began a worldwide phase-out the DuPont corporation alone accounted for 25 percent of world production of chloroflourocarbons (CFCs), the most serious ozone depletors.

* Today DuPont is a leading producer of "CFC-lite" substitutes-HCFCs and HFCs-two chemical replacements that are either harmful to the ozone or potent global warming gasses.

* A handful of chemical corporations produce and distribute the hazardous pesticide methyl bromide-considered today to be the leading threat to the ozone layer. These companies are almost single handedly preventing the Montreal Protocol from implementing a rapid-phase out of this Class I ozone depletor.

* Global Warming: According to the UN, the influence of transnational corporations extends over roughly 50 percent of all emissions of greenhouse gases.

* This includes about half of the oil production business, virtually all of the production of road vehicles, most cloroflourocarbon production, and significant portions of electricity generation and use.

* It is from these corporate sectors that the greatest "doubt" and "uncertainty" about climate change are raised, and where the most obstinate resistance to reducing emissions originates. Such resistence is increasing as the scientific evidence becomes ever clearer that global warming looms on the horizon.

* Persistant Organic Pollutants: Transnational corporations which dominate the chemical industry are responsible for most of the world's toxic waste.

* Annual world production of synthetic organic chemicals has skyrocketed from one million tons in 1930 to seven million in 1950 to sixty-three million in 1970, to 500 million tons in 1990. At current rates, by the turn of the century, the world will produce more than a billion tons of synthetic-organic chemicals every year.

* Used to create pesticides, synthetic fibers, plastics, pulp and paper, detergents and more, the production of these chemicals also makes tremendous amounts of waste. For instance, roughly two-thirds of all hazardous waste produced in the United States comes from chemical corporations.

* Radioactive Waste: The nuclear industry, along with corporations servicing the military-industrial complex, especially nuclear weapons contractors such as Westinghouse and General Electric, together with the world's military establishments, have created some of the worst toxic problems the planet has ever seen.

* Mining: Global corporations such as Rio Tinto Zinc, Kobe Steel and Broken Hill Properties dominate the pollution- intensive mining, refining and smelting of metals such as platinum, aluminum and copper.

* High Costs of High Tech: The production of computers carries with it a set of negative ecological and social impacts. For instance, when the Intel corporation produces just one six inch silicon wafer from which its Pentium chip is cut, it also creates byproducts that include 25 pounds of sodium hydroxide, 2,840 gallons of waste water and 7 pounds of hazardous waste. Meanwhile, California's silicon valley is host to thirty Federal Superfund sites, more than any other region of its size.

* Unsustainble Agriculture: Corporations control virtually every step of the food production and distribution system, which is riddled with ecologically unsustainable practices:

* Just twenty chemical companies account for the sales of over 90 percent of all the world's pesticides. These agricultural chemicals are responsible for tens of thousands of deaths, and at least a million more farmworker poisonings every year.

* Chemical giants such as Shell, Monsanto, Mitsubishi and Sandoz now control many of the world's genetic seed stocks, as well as much of the agricultural biotechnology industry-which presents a new series of potential environmental problems.

* Global giants such as Phillip Morris, United Fruit, Pepsico, Cargill, Unilever and Nestle oversee vast portions of international agricultural production and trade. In fact, transnationals either directly or indirectly command 80 percent of the land around the world that is cultivated for export crops such as bananas, tobacco and cotton. Such agro-export "development" patterns regularly displace farmers producing food for local consumption, pushing them into situations where they must overexploit the environment to survive.

* Deforestation: While a number of factors contribute to deforestation, timber transnationals such as MacMillan Bloedel, Mitsubishi and Georgia Pacific play a central role. Indeed, commercial timber harvests have increased by 50 percent between 1965 and 1990.

* Overfishing: Once a way of life for millions of families and coastal communities, fishing has become big business.

* Highly-mobile, high-tech, large-scale factory fishing fleets owned by corporations such as Spain's Pescanova, Japan's Taiyo, South Korea's Dong Won, and the United States' Arctic Alaska/Tyson Foods roam the world's oceans, indiscriminately plundering the biological diversity of the seas, overstepping the limits of marine ecosystems and wiping out traditional fishing communities.

* According to United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) figures, nearly 70 percent of the world's conventional fishstocks are either fully exploited, severely overtaxed, declining or recovering. "This situation" says the FAO, is globally non-sustainable and major ecological and economic damage is already visible.

Globalization and the Environment

The process of corporate-led globalization is deepening these problems. For instance:

* Expansive investment opportunities generated by agreements such as GATT and NAFTA are allowing corporations to play capital hungry countries off against one another, thus engendering a "race to the bottom" in terms of environmental standards.

* The expansion of the production of fossil fuel burning automobiles is increasing the carbon dioxide load in the atmosphere, thus potentially increasing the severity of global warming.

* The globalization of the chemical industry, is increasing the levels of persistence of pollutants such as dioxin in the environment.

* Globalization induced market openings for extractive industries such as forestry, fisheries and mining is allowing corporations to more rapidly deplete resources in one part of the world, and then move on to another, leaving a trail of devastation in their wake.

Corporate Environmentalism?

Global corporations, responsible for such a large number of environmental problems around the world, are extremely well situated to help resolve the planet's environmental problems-were they actually committed or compelled to do so.

* They have the financial and human resources to create, invest in, produce and distribute new technologies and production processes. Yet their political and economic interests in maintaining a status quo that is most profitable to them has stifled such change.

* In recent years leaders of some of the world's most powerful corporations have begun calling for environmental change- but their kind of change does not measure up to the vision of a sustainable world. The pace and extent of the corporate reforms occurring today simply pale before the fundamental challenge of reversing the world's most pressing environmental and social problems.

* Corporate environmentalism is evolving within the context of economic globalization, which is promoting accelerated environmental destruction along with social dislocation.

* In sum, today's corporate environmentalism is to the ecological and social crises of globalization what a band-aid is to a gaping wound.