By John Elkington*
GuardianJanuary 20, 2001
The Romans had a phrase for it: "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" - "Who guards the guardians?" The question implies a lack of confidence in those appointed to positions of trust - looking after public funds, for example. The question, longapplied to politicians, police forces and judges, could also be applied to campaigning groups.
The proliferation of non-governmental organizations or NGOs, has been a strikingtrend in recent decades. And the evidence suggests that the public invests a great deal more trust in NGOs like Amnesty and Greenpeace than in politicians or business people. Research by Edelman Public Relations found almost one-third of Europeans trusting NGOs to do the right thing, with just one-fifth trusting national governments, 15% business and 11% the media. Strikingly, three-quarters of all respondents said they thought NGO influence had grown.
Fine, but how do we know that such groups do the right thing? There are various answers. One is that not-for-profit groups often have trustees with responsibility to keep things above board. But, at a time when growing numbers of companies have been responding to NGO demands for greater corporate accountability and transparency, what are NGOs doing to ensure they operate in the same goldfish bowl? This is a question increasingly raised by business people. Where they once demanded to know who NGOs represented, now they want to know whether NGOs practice what they preach.
We are not an NGO, but this is an issue to which SustainAbility became sensitive five years ago. As a founder-signatory of the International Chamber of Commerce's Business Charter for Sustainable Development in 1991, we encouraged the business world to begin environmental reporting. It took five years to realize that this also applied to us.
In 1996 we published a self-assessment report called Environmentalism Is Not Enough, reviewing our performance against the 16 ICC principles. One of these requires companies to evaluate the impact of their products and services. Products are not too difficult to deal with, but what about services? What do you measure if you are dedicated to changing people's hearts and minds?
There are few answers as yet, but a number of NGOs have produced useful environmental reports. Forum for the Future published one recently and the UK end of World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has just launched its first externally verified environmental report. This covers such things as emissions of greenhouse gases, but deputy chief executive Leslie Jones notes that thorny issues still to be addressed include the "service effects" and social impacts of WWF's work.
The service effects are direct environmental impacts linked with WWF's core conservation activities. But there are other issues NGOs must address. In our report we stressed the need to evolve new ways of measuring the impact of our work on the thinking and priorities of the public and client companies. But a key issue for mainstream NGOs, and increasingly for companies, relates to lobbying. Who are they lobbying, on what issues, with what outcomes in mind? In this sense, reports like WWF's are still eco-efficiency, rather than eco-effectiveness reports.
Progress, certainly, but recall the case of Caesar's wife. Like NGOs, she wielded huge influence, but knew she had to be seen to be whiter than white.
About the Author: John Elkington is chairman of SustainAbility and co-author of The Global Reporters: The First International Survey of Corporate Sustainability Reporting.
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