Forget Bin Laden and George Dubya, it’s the ‘reasonable’ ones you have to watch out for. Despite promoting himself as Mr Corporate Social Responsibility, Moody-Stuart heads Business Action for Sustainable Development – the business lobby group largely responsible for wrecking the Earth Summit. He is also a director of several companies involved in activities that belie his pledged commitment to ‘sustainable development’

The new brand of corporate environmentalism
A relentless self-publicist, in recent years Mark Moody-Stuart has reinvented himself as an expert on ‘sustainable development’. He is one of the leading purveyors of a new and worrying type of corporate environmentalism. By claiming that ‘business is part of the solution’ and perpetuating the myth that trade liberalisation and fat company profits can go hand in hand with social and environmental justice, Moody-Stuart – and others like him - are jeopardising the very future of the planet.

Although Moody-Stuart does not completely reject regulation (at least publicly), he argues that it is generally not needed. He warns: “The damage is in regulations that instead of specifying desired outcome, tell you what to do. This stifles creativity”. In place of regulation, Moody-Stuart advocates the so-called ‘stakeholder’ model, in which an issue is identified by society and is dealt with in consultation and debate with ‘stakeholders’. Finally, so the theory goes, major companies will take the necessary steps within a ‘free-market framework’ and competition will deliver the best solutions.

Moody-Stuart ignores the fact that this model of self-regulation, despite its popularity among governments in the last decade, has proved incapable of solving the social and environmental global crisis. There is mounting evidence that initiatives such as voluntary codes of conduct, self-regulation and market-based pseudo-solutions are at best inadequate and are certainly no substitute for mandatory and enforceable rules.

Moody-Stuart however argues that “If companies behave improperly, they can be got at through the court of international public opinion”. This is grossly over-simplistic, given that Jo Public is usually the last to know when human rights or environmental abuses take place. And international public opinion finds it hard to send people to prison.

In a recent article in the Financial Times, Moody-Stuart stressed his willingness to exchange views with critics, stating, “If people feel they are excluded from having their point made, they get frustrated - which is extremely dangerous”. Underlying his patronising tone is the worrying strategy of ‘divide and rule’ in dealing with critics. Moody-Stuart and his Corporate Social Responsibilty cronies have developed a standard set of soundbites referring to civil society groups, including the assertion that ‘the vast majority [of NGOs] are fundamentally constructive and want to contribute’. With groups that engage in partnerships or dialogue with industry portrayed as the only responsible ones, groups that might have a more fundamental critique and who are less ready to compromise their demands are marginalised.

Shell - the Greenwash years
Mark Moody-Stuart joined the Shell Group in 1966 and was chairman from 1997/1998-2001. Under Moody-Stuart’s leadership Shell tried hard to brand itself as a caring, green company. Through initiatives such as the Shell Better Britain campaign, the company has managed to greenwash its image quite successfully. The scheme has been criticised by Andrew Lees from Friends of the Earth as being an example of corporations buying a green image rather than actually earning one. Shell’s concrete activities in the period need no introduction.

Business Action for Sustained Destruction
Sir Mark Moody-Stuart currently heads the Business Action for Sustainable Development (BASD) initiative (see BASDards at the WSSD in Newsletter 9). The BASD was essentially invented to wage a PR campaign at the Earth Summit. Through this vehicle the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) extolled the virtues of voluntary initiatives and self-regulation, and hence thwarted efforts to achieve binding international regulation of corporations. That this was the BASD’s main agenda was obvious from a speech Moody-Stuart gave at the group’s opening conference. He argued that promoting a positive image of corporations was urgent, “as others see the need for legislation and codes with teeth to make sure that business, which they regard as unlikely otherwise to pay any attention to anything other than short-term profits, is compelled to adopt certain standards and procedures”.

BASD’s efforts to ensure that business was seen at the Earth Summit to be ‘part of the solution’ to the world’s problems were extremely successful. The Earth Summit is widely accepted by environmentalists as having been an unmitigated disaster. Corporations managed to completely escape any regulation of their activities and the only thing of note that was achieved was a framework for voluntary partnerships between big business, governments and NGOs. In other words it will be ‘business as usual’ for the corporations – largely down to the efforts of BASD. The belief that the big-business community can make a constructive voluntary contribution to sustainable development still clearly remains accepted by the UN after a decade of increasing evidence to the contrary.

Utter Hypocrisy
While Moody-Stuart was at the Earth Summit preaching the benefits of a voluntary approach to Corporate Social Responsibility, several of the companies of which he is a director were busy proving just how unrealistic this is.

Despite professing to be concerned about climate change and to be investing in renewable energy, Shell has not ceased, or scaled back, its oil exploration and production activities. Quite the opposite, the company has ambitious plans to increase oil and gas extraction by 5 per-cent year on year and is so far on target. The amount that the company invests in renewables is paltry in comparison with the amount it invests in expanding its oil empire.

Following widespread public condemnation of the company’s complicity in the execution of Ken Saro Wiwa, Shell went on a huge PR offensive, which included the publishing of an outstanding piece of greenwash – ‘People, Planet and Profits, The Shell Report.’ However, UNPO (Unrepresented Nations and Peoples' Organisation) has argued that ‘the degradation of the environment still continues. Abandoned pipelines cause major troubles. Due to leakages the oil runs freely and destroys the Ogoni lands. Shell accuses the Ogoni people of sabotaging the pipelines; the Ogoni people blame Shell for not keeping the pipelines in repair’. Community leaders have claimed that the community projects that Shell has introduced in the area (another standard greenwash tool) are worthless.

In addition, Shell is one of the oil companies that the United Nations has accused of being complicit in the killing and displacement by the government of Sudan of thousands of civilians living around the country’s oil fields. This month, after sustained pressure from Christian Aid and other campaigning organisations, Shell indicated that it had stopped selling aviation fuel to the government of Sudan, because the company could not guarantee that the fuel was not being used for military as well as civil aircraft.

At the same time however the giant banking group HSBC, another company of which Moody-Stuart is a director, has recently helped issue new European bonds for oil companies with massive investments in Sudan. HSBC is also currently the target of a Friends of the Earth campaign for its financing of Asia Pulp & Paper (APP). APP is the biggest pulp producer in Asia and is responsible for destroying a large area of Indonesian rainforest.

Another of Moody-Stuarts directorships is with the mining giant Anglo American. This company has a long history of exploitation of African labour and has recently faced criticism regarding its planned operations in Peru and alleged pollution in Zambia. The company, which was a pillar of apartheid South Africa, has left behind a legacy of billions of dollars of damage to the environment and communities around Johannesburg itself, the site of the Earth Summit.

Regardless of whether Moody-Stuart actually believes his own rhetoric, its net effect on the Earth Summit has been the same – its complete sabotage. The most dangerous man in the world? - Quite possibly.

Profile of Shell: http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/profiles/oil_gas/shell/shell1.html