UNEP in Nigeria: services up for sale?

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) means well. It describes itself not immodesty as an “advocate, educator, catalyst and facilitator” for the world’s environmental problems. In essence, it’s the green wing of the United Nations.

UNEP does this by promote dialogue, disseminate information, develop regional strategies, host climate change debates and generally hold the hand of environmental authorities in transitional economies.

With the best intentions (namely, there’s no-one else with the clout to do so), the UN agency is expanding its brief to actually digging up data, not just sifting it. Since 1999, UNEP has carried out on-the-ground mitigation studies in twenty-five countries.

Now, as Ethical Corporation’s Eric Marx explains, it’s facing its biggest job to date: surveying the Niger Delta. Over the last half century, an estimated 9 billion barrels of oil have seeped out into this highly-politicised corner of Nigeria.

On the face of it, the project is meeting its objectives. Since its inception in October 2009, the 100 strong UNEP team has taken 1,200 samples and charted 300 spill sites.

All is not well, however. Though key groups among the delta’s Ogoni population are backing the process, many Nigerians and environmental groups remain sceptical. The study, they say, is being financed by oil major Shell – the main private operator in the region. The findings will, they continue, therefore be compromised. That allegation was given a boost when the chief of the UNEP mission blamed 90% of spills on oil ‘bunkering’. That’s to say, common thievery.

Shell is adamant that it is standing aloof from the scientific process of monitoring and surveillance. Nor is it the primary financier. More than half (55%) of the $100 million, three-year project is being picked up by the Nigerian government as majority partner in Shell’s Nigerian joint venture. Shell owns 30%. France’s Total and Italy’s AGIP have a 10% and 5% stake respectively. All partners are paying a commensurate percentage.

At a broader level, the project has raised a larger question: as Marx asks, is UNEP for sale? How objective can the agency be when ultimately it is accountable to and funded by its member states. Speaking to Ethical Corporation, UNEP’s executive director Achim Steiner says the agency is not in the business of “legal liability attribution”. That may be so, but truthful science should point a finger in the general direction of the perpetrators. Whether UNEP is willing to be seen as overtly criticising one of its member states – or their key partners – is the issue at stake for the sceptics.

There’s another side to the debate, of course. UNEP, it could be argued, are the environmental equivalent to the Red Cross. Their stance as expert insiders without a political axe to grind gives them access and behind-the-scenes negotiating power that few (no?) other organisations enjoy.

Extending the reach of their stakeholder engagement efforts should help UNEP strengthen its apolitical credentials. That’s what it did in Sudan with some success. Finding well-resourced local partners in the Niger delta is not an easy task, however.

UNEP’s final report is due out at the end of this year. In some ways, it’s a poisoned chalice. Too damning and it faces overstepping its impartial brief. Too lenient and critics will accuse it of bias. The best solution is to stick rigourously to the science. There is safety in numbers, of the statistical kind. UNEP’s role is too important to get embroiled in finger pointing. There are others with far more experience in the blame game who can be left to do that.

Brent Spar: ditching defence for dialogue

In the summer of 1996, Shell Centre was crawling with newly hired PR men and “expert” consultants. The headquarters of the Anglo-Dutch oil major was on crisis alert. Twelve months previously, a handful of Greenpeace activists had clambered onboard Shell’s Brent Spar oil storage buoy in the North Sea. The action sparked a standoff that was to wake the world to a new player: the activist NGO.

I was a Shell intern that summer, occupying a little noticed seat in public affairs. In the thick-carpeted offices above, the powers-that-be were sitting on a report from New York’s Stern School of Business. It contained a detailed cost analysis of the still unresolved Brent Spar fiasco. The final figure ended with lots of zeros, let’s put it that way. The troubled execs didn’t want a repeat.

When the Greenpeace campaign first hit, Shell’s response had been typical for the time. ‘Decide, Act, Defend’ (D.A.D) ran the motto of the day. The sensible, technical-minded folk at Shell (remember, this is a company dominated by logical engineers) had evaluated the options and made their decision. Legally, operationally, financially, even environmentally, sinking the buoy in the North Sea ticked all the necessary boxes. Now was the time to act. So a few mad (this was pre-political correctness; ‘misinformed’, let’s say) ‘greens’ took issue. So what? Shell had seen worse in its then ninety-year history. And when it came to defending, its army of PR pros and legal whizzes presented a formidable force.

What Shell hadn’t realised was that the rules of the game had changed. To be fair, at that stage, no-one really had. The internet was just taking off. Modern media was toying with satellite-fed imagery. 24-hour news channels were starting. The anti-globalisation movement was beginning to mobilise. Brent Spar was the “tipping point”, as a senior Shell spokesperson puts it in a detailed analysis of the case in Ethical Corporation’s recent ‘Classic Case Studies’.

For two months, Shell slugged it out the old way. Reason, it figured, would eventually win out. It didn’t. The oil major tried challenging Greenpeace on the science, notably the claim that Brent Spar would be sunk with 5,500 tonnes of oil on board (a mere 10 turned out to be closer to the truth). It succeeded in winning an apology from the campaign group. But by then the battle was lost. The TV footage had already been broadcast. The anti-Shell editorials already published. And the boycotts had begun. As Greenpeace’s membership department was becoming overrun, Shell realised it had to change tack.

Negotiations to decide an alternative solution kicked off. Those concluded almost three years later. By the time the fated buoy was tugged into a Norwegian harbour and dismantled for use in a ferry terminal, Shell was unrecognisable. D.A.D had been ditched. It was now all about D.D.A (Dialogue, Decide, Act). The significance was more than some jiggling in the letters. Shell was accepting the importance on ‘dialogue’. It was coming down from its ivory tower and talking to concerned parties. And not just friendly parties. Critics too. In doing so, Shell was admitting for that their voice was legitimate. It was also breaking new ground.

The idea had a persuasive internal logic to it: namely, if you could identify “issues” (as the in-house jargon had it then) early on, then you could nip them in the bud. Future Brent Spars were that way supposed to be avoided. The command to ‘Defend’ could also, theoretically, be consigned to the dustbin (pardon, recycling bin).

It sounds easy. In practice, it’s far from it. Identifying issues requires going out to speak to your ‘stakeholders’. But which ones? And how? And about what? In the early days, dialogue was a very structured affair; lots of focus groups and the like. Those still play a role. Now in the age of social media, however, approaches are changing quickly (as is companies’ ability to control the dialogue process).

In Brent Spar, Shell learned some important lessons. Not ignoring hostile voices is probably the most important. Being more open and transparent comes a close second. To its credit, the oil major did its best to adapt. It became one of the first big proponents of triple-bottom line thinking (‘People, Planet Profit’, as it coined it, with help from those experts – genuine ones, for once - at SustainAbility). Then came the ‘Tell Shell’ campaign, an early experiment in online dialogue. Next came weighty, well-meaning corporate social and environment reports. In short, Shell was out there testing and toying with the management theories and tools that were collectively becoming branded as “corporate social responsibility”.

Over the last decade and a half, stakeholder expectations have changed dramatically. So has their power to voice them. Those shifts lie at the root of corporate efforts to become more accountable, transparent and engaged. The Brent Spar affair meant Shell had to learn faster than most. Yet the lessons are equally relevant to all. 

The Netherlands and CSR: Moths or Behemoths?

For a small country, the Netherlands has more than its fair share of big companies. Aegon, AkzoNobel, Heineken, ING, Philips Electronics, Royal Dutch Shell, TNT, Unilever – the list rolls on. Many will be familiar to those that follow sustainability indices. There are a dozen Dutch multinationals in the benchmark Dow Jones Sustainability Index.

But does big necessarily mean beautiful? That’s the question behind Ethical Corporation’s recent Country Briefing. The answer all depends, author Stephen Gardner concludes, on who’s doing the beholding.

If it’s a box-ticker, then ‘yes’. More than six in ten (63%) of major Dutch companies produce an annual sustainability report – a figure far in advance of European counterparts such as Germany, Italy and Spain.

Internationalists are also likely to answer positively. From the days of the Dutch East India company, the Netherlands’ sights have been firmly set overseas. It’s a perspective to which its modern multinationals have remained true. As with its government, private companies rank international development highly. And not just in cash terms. Programmes such as the Sustainable Trade Initiative are making strides in spreading efficient, ethical standards away from home. Their supply chain record is no less impressive. The vigilance of Dutch campaign groups and investors has a lot to do with that.

For others, big means bad. Not all Dutch companies are whiter than white. Global bank ING, for instance, has recently come under scrutiny for its holdings in controversial companies”, such as cluster bomb and landmine component makers.

But for most, big simply means cumbersome. Dutch companies have a reputation for following, not leading. Most are a century-plus old. That slows the dynamo somewhat. As Gardner puts it: “Though Dutch companies are among the best, they are generally not the very best, or they are the best only in certain areas.” Shell stands as a case in point. It recently slipped from the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, the first time since the ranking’s inception over a decade ago. The reason has yet to be published. Problems in the Niger Delta could be to blame. But more likely, the company just stood still and let others go past it.

Yet the Netherlands is not without its ethical innovators. It’s just a case of where to look. The real action is happening at the other end of the telescope, among the moths not the behemoths. The Dutch know these small, nimble players as “double goal” firms. Triodos Bank, the ethical finance pioneer, is perhaps best known. Its fames for using its $3 billion balance sheet to finance those “working to make the world a better place.” Others - like union-founded bank ASN, local brewer Gulpener and pro-organic fashion label G-Star Raw - are less well known. (The Briefing includes a case study of carpet manufacturer Desso’s cradle-to-cradle production approach should anyone need convincing).

Of course, there’s always a danger that the Netherlands’ ethical minnows might sink rather than swim. In an age of austerity, government incentives are few and far between. That said, the Dutch government does now apply sustainable purchasing criteria to all public contracts.

But government support is confined mostly to the realm of the rhetorical. “Inspiring, innovating and integrating” runs the current mantra from the Staten-Generaal (the Dutch Parliament). If you’re on the look-out for examples, it’d be as well to think small as it would big.