The Earth Summit was the first occasion that
business and industry have played an important and constructive
role in the run-up to a global UN conference.
UNCED Secretary-General Strong had appointed
Swiss industrialist Stephan Schmidheiny to be his principal adviser
on business and industry. Schmidheiny invited key chief executive
officers from five continents to join his Business Council for
Sustainable Development (BCSD). Some of the better- known of the 48
companies represented - by officers representing themselves rather
than their companies- include ABB, Ceiba- Geigy, Chevron, Du Pont,
Mitsubishi, Nippon Steel, Nisson, Shell, 3M and Volkswagen.
By the beginning of Rio, the Council had produced
a 35O-page report which was commercially published in six languages
as a book entitled Changing Course: a Global Business Perspective
on Development and the Environment. The Council held a meeting in
Rio and a press conference before the Summit began proper (as did
the much larger International Chamber of Commerce: ICC). The
Council supported "free markets" and "market forces", but argued
that capitalism could not survive if those markets did not reflect
environmental as well as economic truth. They called for stricter
enforcement of the 'polluter pays' principle, and for prices which
reflect environmental costs. They urged governments to consider
greater use of "economic instruments", such as environmental taxes
and saleable pollution permits, rather than command-and- control
regulations.
Another main message was that there are a number
of trends working in the world which will encourage businesses
toward economical and environmental excellence. Those firms which
are not "eco-efficient" - able to maximise added value while
minimising resource use and pollution - are essentially unviable
and will not remain competitive for long.
This message was psychologically very powerful,
and also contradicted President Bush's expressed fears that
environmentalism would make firms less competitive. So the
Council's views were picked up in most of the world's major
newspapers. Schmidheiny and his staff then spent the first week of
the Summit doing what other NGOs were doing, lobbying to have their
positions accepted. They spoke at Global Forum presentations,
lunched with World Bank leaders, breakfasted with US senators, and
spoke to outside gatherings, such as the Junior Chamber of Commerce
and a group of "spiritual and parliamentary leaders".
This exercise was very successful in terms of
attention and column inches, but of course it is much harder to
judge its effect upon the Summit. Chapter 30 of Agenda 21 deals in
a rather vague and summary fashion with business and industry. With
that exception, there were few UNCED documents which affected
business directly, while the Council's conclusions tended to be
addressed more to individual businesses and to individual
governments.