INTERVIEW WITH JANE NELSON PRINCE OF WALES BUSINESS LEADERS FORUM
SEPTEMBER 8, 2000
STATE OF THE WORLD FORUMThis interview has to do with the new niche of business
THE CORPORATION AS PEACEMAKERS
or the creation of the CEO as "Statesman"
Please see my interview with Mary Robinson at the World Economic Forum-Davos 01Veon:
The more I learn about the Prince I realize he has been a visionaryway before his time with the environment, public-private-partnerships and now peace making through conflict resolution, could you comment on these.
Jane:
He definitely a visionaryhe has an incredibility to convene people, he will bring together people might not ever sit around the table, often behind closed doors -- it doesn't get media coverage and he doesn't necessarily ask for that and he cares very deeply about sustain ability, about helping to sustain a world where values and local culture and ethnic and religious diversity are celebrated and respected. I think he has an amazing ability to think in a holistic way so that he sees a connection between inner city kids who don't have education or work opportunities and violence and conflict and lack of sustain-ability and environmental problems. He has many different programs which many think are not connected but he really does have an understanding of the human side, nature, medicine, science, are all part of the whole to create a better world. Different organizations he is involved with focus on different elements of that. Our organization focuses very specifically on the role of business and society. This has gone from environmental issues, to PPP, to the new work on human rights and conflict which wasn't even on the business agenda a few years ago except for a few industry sector. As we see, internal conflicts particularly in the transition economies0the former soviet union and central Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia where many international companies are now going to invest, increasingly they are recognizing that the business of peace is something that the companies need to think about. As our President, he encourages us with the work we do in business to look at that. We are also doing work in South Africa and Latin America on HIV/AIDS, looking at business and their contribution to cultural heritage in St. Petersburg, the link between large scale business and micro-enterprises in Indonesia, we are doing a range of different things around the world. All of them have at their core the positive role that business can play in society. He has a wonderful way of bringing business together with civil society and government to address these issues. .
Veon:
His uncle the Duke of Windsor, there was criticism about himhe could have done many things but he lived a life a leisure whereas prince Charles has gone into business and all the things that have been non-traditional for someone in his position
Jane:
He has a wonderful ability and has an incredible reverence for tradition and culture, be it culture or political tradition which is also part of the modern world and recognizes that having something on the internet is important. The Duchy of Cornwall which is involved in organic farming which he has set up as a way of articulating his values and practice. He continues to have an enormous respect for tradition and looks at innovative and creative things he can do to address modern day challenges and build a bridge tradition and modernity and recognizes the role they all have to play.
Veon:
Sustainable Development has become a core philosophical global value. He was one of the first to congratulate the Brundtland Commission for their role in developing sustainable development. What gave him the impetus to understand sustainable development before it was a phrase it was used.
Jane:
I can't speak for him personally but back in the 80's he had a vision that sustainable development and the environment were critical issues for the future of the world and has been and continues to be an incredible strong advocate for that. I can't speak for him but he has listened and spoken to an incredible range of people from all walks of life, many cultures, countries and perspectives. One of the things which he has distilled out of that is the critical importance of sustainable development.
Veon
He set up the PWBLF in 1990 with 100 companies, how many companies are members and what kind of growth.
Jane:
We never had 100 companies. At our first meeting we many have had 100 but our membership is never more than 50 or 60 companies which is our core support so that we can keep a focus on keeping it small enough that we can have a relationship with them. But it is our membership which sustains and supports us and acts as a champion for what we do but then we outreach to thousands of companies in the work that we do, not only to companies but to the world Bank, civil society, the UN. Our core support comes from about 50 companies from around the world
Veon: What kind of evolution have you seen in those corporations?
Jane:
It has been our evolution is reflected in what they have been doing and we have evolved as they have evolved . Human rights is a good example where we have encouraged them to look at it more seriously than what they were. Others of them have been pioneers in the filed and have encourage us to look at it. So I think we have moved the whole corporate responsibility and sustainable development field from being a side line issue to business to being a mainstream issue for a small group of pioneering companies, many of which we are fortunate enough to have as our members. So they are constantly pushing the envelope and constantly challenging themselves but also us. Then there are numerous companies around the world who aren't are members but numerous companies who don't get these issues yet in a strategic way and who we are trying to communicate with in a wider way so we are working much more closely with companies who understand the issues and who are trying to operationalize them and we are having wider communications who are still in a stage of understanding how strategic these issues are. What we have see is a couple of trends which is a core responsibility have gone from margins of management to the mainstream, telling and asserting what they do to being much more accountable. Then you have the area of stakeholder dialogue has become a key issue for a lot of the companies we work with. They have also gone from a paternalistic approach of corporate largesscharity and philanthropy to a much more partnership based approach with communities, governments, and other stakeholders in trying to address the social challenges You see much more collective action between individual companies on the HIV/Aids issues--the Global Business Council on HIV/AIDS, national level initiatives by business-urban regeneration by business coming together to work collectively. I think the whole field of corporate responsibility is maturing. It is a vanguard group of corporations which is pursuing it.
Veon:
Don't you look at yourself as a pioneerspearheading?
Nelson:
We are one of the pioneers, I would love to take credit but I think there is a number of business coalitions like ourselves who are doing different work in different waythe Business Council for Sustainable Development, European business network, social cohesion, the south Africa, World Business Council for Sustainable Development. The WBC was set up 10 years ago. We have all been doing things.
Veon: What was the impetus for all of this action in the 90's?
Nelson:
A lot of it was set up by the companies themselves. We would not have been set up if it had not been for the companies had not come together Obviously The Prince of the Wales took the leadership to convene them. But they could have said to him, "Thanks for lunch" but they didn't. They said, "Look we will work with you to make this happen."' What brought the companies to the table is the changing world in which we live in since the Berlin Wall came down, rise of civil society, rise of international media, the internet, all of these changing pressures on business also increase society pressures and the same time they are facing increasing competitive pressures realizing that they have to create more shareholder value but they also have to create more societal value and so I think a lot of the impetus from individual companies saying we have to do something. Organizations like ours being set up with the leadership of the Prince of Wales to say, "fine we will help address it." We really act as a catalyst but what we do would not be possible without the companies taking it on and acting on it.
Veon:
I just came across the UN and Business by UNOPS. It says that he Prince met with the United nations. What prompted the Prince to take the initiative to approach the United Nations.
Nelson:
Basically we had been doing a lot of work with various UN agencies around the world with our companies. The prince has been aware of that and very supportive of it. He felt that it was the right time to meet with Kofi Annan. They had an initial meeting and then through that we took a delegation of business leaders to meet with Secretary Annan and some of the heads of his agencies and from that we ran a series of training programs at the United Nations Staff Training College to brief senior UN officials and senior business leaders to really get to know each other, understand other and to realize that we really do have some common agenda items that we could work on together. We are now running a program to help the UN think how they can train their people to work in the field to work with business.
We are doing this at the UN Staff Training College so we are working with them to help build partnership capacity. A college of mine has been working with them in thinking through about how they can train UN staff instead of us doing it since our own staff is so small. We are doing catalytic work in helping them and then the UN Staff College will pick it up. There is the World Bank's business partners for Development and a number of international agencies doing this worksome we have had a big role in, others we have not had a big role in. Where there is efforts to build the capacity because partnerships don't just happen in a vacuum because you need the capacity and skills to build them. From that initial meeting with the business leaders we have developed a whole set of actions around the world, bringing UN people, business people to try and work together.
Veon: I read in the UNOPS book that PPP originated in the 15th Century.
Nelson:
At the end of the day there is the tendency to think that something is new. PPP as an organizing principle for society at the national, international and local level. It is relatively new because have are seeing the UN, local community organizations talk about it, we are seeing national level initiatives. It is happening all over the world because I think in today's incredibly complex world it is one of the organizing principles we have to address vary complex issues. But having said that it is not easy and everyone talks about it. It sort of trips off of everyone's tongues as if it is easy panacea. It is very difficult to bring together a real solid PPP , particularly if you are going to bring in civil society and government and business to the table together. The most effective examples I know of at the national and international level have taken many months of trust building, relationship building, understanding everyone's languages and objectives and in fact I have a copyI wrote another report, Partnership of Alchemy which looks at some of the challenges of partnerships but recognizing that it has enormous organizing principle for social progress.
Veon:
The reason for all the questions on public-private partnerships is because it first appeared in the United Nations Habitat II document in 1996. At that time I did not quite understand the termswhat is civil society. Then it was I ran into at the IMF Bank - Prince Charles "business in the Community." I devoured that book. Now a few years later I come here to my second Gorbachev State of the World Forum and the UN Millennium Assembly and I am now understanding new facets, new dimensions. This is sort of a like a prism. As you turn the prism, the light gives you a different understanding, a different view, a different color.
Nelson:
This is a lovely way to look at it. That is why I hesitated when you said, "You are the pioneering organization because we certainly are one of the pioneers and we are very proud of it. We certainly could not have done without it literally millions of peopleindividuals, organizationscommunity organizations, international organizations, which are doing different things in different ways. We are at the interface of a lot of things. Again we are only 30 people in our organization. We have our net work of companies and work with international organizations.
Veon: But you are tapping
Nelson: Our focus is to live at the interface of business, government and civil society and at the interface of north and south, east and west. So we are that is our whole philosophy about how you bring those various groups together.
Veon:
So I come here and I thought I understood globalization. I have defined it as "the integration, harmonization of social values, ethics, governments, economies, politics, religion become one. Well I come here and I realize that it is much more than that. Then when I looked at "The Business of Peace" I said, "O my goodness, globalization is the melding together. It is the melding together of more than just people."
Nelson:
Yes, there it is. It definitely is more than the melding together of just people. I think it is a really contradictory thing. It has incredible benefits and opportunities but it also has incredible problems and challenges. It has made the equation for leadersbe they a leader in business, government or civil society the equation by which they have to work is so much more complex than it has ever been and the only way they can begin to deal with it is to try and understand these different facets different parts of the prism--that are part of globalization.
Veon:
One of the things I find fascinating is that as I understand moreas I read more of your documents is that you have been able to digest and eat the elephant and explain it. You have written the booksyou've been at the core, you have been dialoguing, you have been leading all these sessions. Did you do this?
Nelson: That is less complicated than thatit's now 3 circles.
Veon:
Look Joe Averagewhat I do is I take these concepts and I then chewing what you have already chewed and I am internalizing them and I do diagrams and I express"this is what is happening." I see my role as a facilitatordefining the global for the local.
Nelson:
I was making that same connection. It is the biggest challenge we face. How to take this stratospheric dialogue, concepts, and jargon and actually make it real for real people, real communities on the ground. I am trying to write so that the lay person can understand.
Veon:
I have been doing this for six year with my head in a bowl of jellow for two years. One day I came out of the jellow and now I am getting my PhD which no college is going to give me in understanding.
I now understand the downside of globalizationwhen all of the walls came down, the mass of the world became one and was left in this big pool to fight it out themselvessome turned to war, some to this, so when I look at what you are saying, 'of course,'when the corporation goes in, they have the ability to make the job, create money movement in a country and now to keep peace. That is why your organizations entre into conflict resolution so absolutely incredible.
Nelson:
We are not going to do it ourselves but demonstrate that business has an interest and a strategic interest in stability and peace. There are all sorts of things business can do to achieve that. There are wonderful organizations which actually go into conflict resolution and we have no claim or capacity to do that. We are trying to shine the light to show business what they can dobe it HIV/AIDS, to conflict, to environment, it is all about what role the private sector can play and helps their own bottom line and their own long-term survival. But at the same time, help society. This is what we are about. The main streaming of corporate responsibility and strategy.
Veon: I see that the world philosophy and structure is being redefined.
Nelson:
Yes, I agree with that since the early 1980s and 1990s we live in a very different worldThe roles and responsibilities of government, business, civil society, international, local, national are all so much fuzzier at the momenteveryone is shifting trying to figure out where they fit and what their role is. I think it is a very exciting time and potentially a frightening time. There is a lot of flux and uncertainty in the world. Somehow after the Cold War was over everything would settle down to nice, easy existence is not happening. What has fundamentally changed is that it is not the nation-states that have all the answers, if they ever did. They are recognizing that they alone don't have the answers But the big challenge now is how do we develop new institutional structures, new rules of the game, new rules of operating that bring in civil society and business which by way of definition nation-statesgovernment that is either elected or not electedbut there is a government. you want the business in brazilwho sits at the table-business is an amorphous thing. It is not a big monolithic thing. Civil society is amorphous. So the big challenge in the world today. We talk about business, government and civil society but which government, business and civil society which different players which roles and it is in trying to understand that that it is the challenge of our time.
Veon:
I read in a Majesty magazine a question about Prince applying to become head of the European Union. The answer was that he did not have enough experience as a world leader. Do you see Charles as
Nelson: He doesn't apply for things. I don't know the story.
Veon: What I noticed recently-wales is a principalityequal to Monaco and Liechtensteinit has a certain amount of autonomy. Do you think they would ever become part of the United Nations?
Nelson:
[gasping] As long as they are part of the United Kingdom which is a member of the United Nations, I don't think so.
Veon: What are you working on next, or the new core, or new structures you are looking at?
Jane:
Human rights and conflict, enterprise development all the different things business can do in developing countries. We are looking at a program to develop future leaders in business, we are working with business schools and student networks but looking more and more at leadership development.
END