I feel extremely satisfied when I have access to great minds and thinkers. People who bring themselves to the table and tell the audience a story. Today, I have experienced two immense stories and I will write about one of those stories in depth here. Mary Robinson’s title of the lecture (which is also based on a book by Muhammad Yunus) is Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism. Muhammad is the leader of mmicro credit and encourages social business. In a forum in November 2006, he once said that “poverty is the abscence of all human rights…cannot sustain peace in any society”. Mary urges everyone to read the book.
The Bottom Billion
Mary’s approach to this talk is that she brings a distinct human rights lens into the world of social business and green tech. We are in an area of extreme change and the challenge is being in a low carbon world with and that “business as usual approach would be deadly.” We must also look towards the “bottom billion” which is the term used by Paul Collier. Cannot be done business only as his focus is on the traps that snares the economic development of countries – civil war, extraction of natural resources and more. Check out his TED talk.
An example of this is when Mary was in the Republic of Congo with a large poor population but is a rich country in terms of minerals, but it has been devastated by civil war. Collier’s call of action is to focus on these failing states and recommends a charter with the likes of budget transparency and more.
According to Mary, from a human rights perspective, we need two approaches:
- Empower those living in poverty to be the agents of change.
- Make the law work for everyone.
She was involved in a report (which will be discussed in the later weeks. 64th session was in September) which drew conclusions that individuals living in poverty are excluded (or feel excluded?) from the rule in law. Legal power would mean that the poor or the excluded can use law to advance rights as citizens. She notes that 4 billion have no access to the rule of the law and to justice out of 6.7 billion. Not wonderful achievement considering the short timespan to when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was made. However, there are four pathways for the poor to break out of the vicious cycle of poverty:
- Need of property rights
- Labour rights
- Business rights
- Access to justice
Involvement of the private sector // GFC
There was an American businessman in property recording who decided to bring his expertise to Ghana (an interesting cross expertise opportunity).
The global financial crisis sent shockwaves and it affected not only the big cities (which is what I read about mainly) but also the slums with increase in unemployment and a global jobs crisis that will affect us even several years after this year. She mentions that as international trade flow wanes, there can be an opportunity to look inwards and that can come in the application of equitable and sustainable development by the private sector. There is also an increase in market expectancy for the private sector to fund these types of initiatives.
Millennium Development Goals
Or otherwise called MDG’s, these are goals that are aimed to be achieved by 2015. Many of the goals are not met by countries due to lack of financial resources and lack of political will – ie in the failure to address problems like chronic poverty. Last week, she shared a panel with Wangari Muta Maathai for a UN discussion and she spoke of the 10 million in Kenya with severe malnutrition.
There needs to be the shift towards holistic overview with business activities in the private sector too affect human rights in a positive manner. Companies to take steps in being aware and to actively prevent violations in human rights in their business activities. It is not just a case of “just do no harm”, according to Professor Ruggie, but a case of due diligence and standards, particularly with the role and power of the private sector growing with the amount of money of private sector investment eclipsing investments by other bodies. However the role of the government could be in the creation/reinforcement of policies to promote developmental efforts.
Growth
The global financial crisis, food, climate issues are challenges for both government and the private sector. According to GE, trust is at an all-time low and there is anger towards corporations and capitalism. Operate with integrity, openness and transparency.” Create and maintain exclusive job-build growth. The global jobs pact recommends sets of measures for private sectors such as having no deflationary waste barrels, have legal and regulatory frameworks for enterprise creation and more.
An example of collaboration is between Oxfam and Unilever which developed a working relationship despite having a cautionary approach at first sight for the both sides. Oxfam looked at Unilever’s value chain in Indonesia at it showed that wealth from this company was higher in the central. Further out into the value chain, it decreased. The conclusion was to pay attention to throughout the value chain. For Unilever and Oxfam, linkages was important such as the connections with the 74 suppliers.
Corporate Social Responsibility
Companies with long term commitment are most likely to stay throughout the crisis. The two forms of investment that are contrary to this are portfolio investments and private ector activity in special enterprise zones. Mary also added a third which is the extraction of industry investment which displaces communities and negatively affects the environment. This “short termism” with the weakening concern by all stakeholders which favour the short term solutions.
The CSR agenda can’t just be an add-on, the value of it can’t just be profits. Seek the business case and an example of this case is The Gap and their commitment to solve issues in the supply chain. Specifically to CSR is climate change issue and that is easy to be measured for companies. Mary later ads that the private sector is critical in addressing change in human behaviour and technological changes. In TED videos, I see this happening by real people and real projects. The main goal is for the private sector to turn/be an “enlightened form of capitalism“.
Green
Mary has some caution regarding carbon trading and she does a call-out on the need for ensuring transparent and equitable trading. Acknowledge injustice of climate change/global warming and how other countries are affected with the world’s poor contributing the least and the richer economies (including the emerging big economies such as India and China) contributing the most. Look into the current and the projected energy needs, particularly considering population growth.
Role of social entrepreneurialism
While this is mentioned throughout the lecture, there seems to be more focus near the end. Corporate leaders are looking into lighting for Africa using solar energy. Others see business opportunity, social entrepreneurs working on projects with social commitments (and a business case). Mary visited the Lawrence Lab in Berkeley and was shown the Darfur stove that can be geared to three sizes of pots used and only needed a portion of the usual firewood. There are lots of projects to develop and scale up.
Q&A Session
When I saw the planned duration, I was afraid that there is going to be little time but the whole event took about 1.5 hours including QA which I believe is a very good time.
I have written down snippets of the questions and answers but didn’t pay much attention to it and I also feel that by the time you finish reading this, you would have questions and discussion points of your own!
In conclusion
Mary Robinson is a great public speaker and even if there are points that you/I do not agree on (or points which need realism to it to make things more practical) her passion in her work and her active advocacy is inspirational to me. It is great to have Brisbane Festival hosting such a figure and I hope to see, meet and talk to figures such as these.
I don’t know what the audience constituency is, but I have read through ‘Creative Capitalism’ in which Bill Gates talked about the “enlightened form of capitalism” that Mary talks about as well. Michael Kinsley conducted an online forum and facilitated responses from various people including Warren Buffet, Milton Friedman and more based on Bill Gates speech (see my previous entry which includes a Youtube video of that speech) and many of those responses were mixed/critical and a few completely agreed with it. The questions received were from those who already agree with this notion so it would have been interesting to see what the viewpoint is from people such as those in ‘Creative Capitalism’.
Who is Mary Robinson?
I read ‘Creative Capitalism’ which is a series of replies and discussions edited by Michael Kinsley (Time columnist). The great thing about this book is that it merely presents a series of viewpoints and perspectives about Gates’ approach to philanthropy and in particular his speed at the 2008 AGM of the World Econommic Forum in Davos, Switzerland (see the YouTube below). You can read these replies and you can make up your mind about the issue, choose to further ignore it or read further into it. So I have a feeling that many of the points explored in this book is going to share synergy with Mary Robinson’s talk and providing that I have the room to take part in the QA session, will be asking her about it.
