Responsible Business Summit in the UK (Part I)

As an American, part of the attraction of Ethical Corporation's London-based "Responsible Business Summit" was the opportunity to observe cultural differences between the UK sustainability community and the parallel movement in the US – though perhaps to call them parallel does not do justice to how far the British movement has come.

For some time, I’ve been impressed by the volume and quality of sustainability-related news coming out of the UK, but I did wonder: are the British are really that much more engaged in sustainability issues? And would I be able to see real evidence of that in just a couple of days? 

The short answer: absolutely. 

After waking up and pulling a bag of fair-trade coffee out of my friend’s energy-efficient freezer, I walked to the Tube and picked up a copy of the Metro – where the front-page article was on climate change. At the Park Plaza hotel, I was momentarily confused by the “Responsibility to Opportunity” conference being held one floor up from Ethical Corporation’s Responsible Business Summit. Sustainability was everywhere.

At the start of the first session, I sat next to a local professor who teaches on sustainability issues - something I found to be quite amazing, given extremely slow adoption of sustainability curricula in the US.  During the first Q&A, another sustainability professor stood up to ask something.  And another.  And I think maybe even one more.  These profs were everywhere, and no longer seemed to consider it extraordinary that their job descriptions focused explicitly on sustainability issues.

Then there were the offhand comments in the keynotes and panels.  On speaker referenced the fact that "ten years ago, fair trade used to be almost a joke, and now it's everywhere."  In the US, I can still hear the laughter, especially when the Starbucks barista has no idea where the fair trade coffee is located.  Here, even the gas station convenience stores stock fair-trade products (and the Kleenex is FSC-certified).

Another interesting comment was on the successful campaign against genetically modified foods, which are now considered across the UK and Europe to be absolutely horrible, and something no one would touch.  While Europeans are just starting to consider relaxing this hard-line approach, most American have no idea what in their diet might be GM, nor do they much care.  The debate pretty much passed us by, though broader food movements (slow-food, organic, local) might eventually encompass it.

Then one of my favorite comments, on the need for an entrepreneurial approach to seeking sustainability innovation: "Whenever people here the word risk, they think of the precautionary principle....  we need to be less afraid of risk."  In the US, not so much.  We're full of serial entrepreneurs, and for many a first-time failure is like a rite of passage.

Finally, there was the sudden realization that I might want to stop by the breakout sessions on climate change, because they are being discussed in an entirely different context.  In the US, it's about proactively addressing something on which the Bush administration is dragging its heels, and it's about voluntary compliance and carbon "markets" based on purely voluntary actions.  But here, it's a legal system that's non-optional, and the value contained in carbon markets is absolutely real.