Some people think that our global future rests with reforming the UN. That presents a depressing challenge. But change often comes in the form of a skunk works[1], and that’s what UN Secretary General Kofi Annan created in 2000 with the Global Compact (GC). The return on his $10,000 investment in the very competent Georg Kell and John Ruggie was on display last week at the GC’s 10th anniversary. And with it, was an embryonic display of our future global decision-making processes.
The Compact is a strategy to give life to the idealistic UN values about labor, human rights, the environment, transparency…the 10 Compact principles that are wonderful statements that the UN has produced, but has proven pretty ineffective at realizing. The Compact is specifically focused upon corporations and engaging them to actively integrate the principles. Although technically controlled by the UN, the GC’s success depends upon being responsive to a multi-stakeholder Board.
Over 1200 people participated in the New York Times Square hotel meetings that lasted 2-1/2 days. It was labeled the “Leaders Summit”, an event occurring every three years. The theme was “Building a new era of sustainability”. Preparations totally pre-occupied the GC for many months. The event itself was rather ho-hum, with some weaknesses:
- A vapid Accenture report that was widely criticized for its methodological weakness and self-promotion about enlightened corporate views of sustainability.
- Old white males dominating…but it was an accurate representation of the current corporate elite. There was a sincere and modestly effective effort to bring in diversity: geographically it was somewhat diverse (reflecting travel costs); although technically there was diversity to include academics, NGOs and government types, they were not generally of a critical ilk.
- There was no meaningful “decision-making” role for participants that would build a true sense of ownership.
- Obliging people to stand with the arrival of the Secretary-General really inserted an anachronistic protocol into a forward-focused meeting.
Never to be discounted at these events is their occasion to build important inter-personal ties…the active community building. The main activities consisted of panels highlighting Compact participants’ perspectives, punctuated with round table discussions for the greater 1200 with a variety of stakeholders. These helped connect across different perspectives. However, the range of participants and the rather superficial GC connections of many…I had new GC members who were a Namibian banker on one side and a Managing Partner of a small Danish law firm on the other…made discussion pretty superficial.
It led me to wonder if the GC’s national networks can be made the focal meeting participants, giving them a role in GC policy, planning and decision-making through the event. This could ground the event in much more substantive issues with much better-informed and engaged people, as some other Global Action Networks do with global meetings.
Nevertheless, the meeting was better than what the UN usually produces. It demonstrated that the knitting together of Global Action Networks into a new web of multi-stakeholder change networks is advancing rapidly. Transparency International, the Principles for Responsible Investment and the Global Reporting Initiative were active presences, and Social Accountability International’s Eileen Kaufman was a vocal participant. These form a group of GANs reshaping corporations’ future, complementing a health care group of GANs operating out of Geneva.
But perhaps most importantly the meeting produced a sense of forward-momentum. I heard criticism that the Compact was not offering anything to companies leading in sustainability action. And then a segmentation strategy was presented to create a space specifically for leading companies. The Global Reporting Initiative and the Global Compact announced an alliance that will respond to the criticism about emptiness of the current reports by companies on their performance in terms of the principles. And John Ruggie, on behalf of the UN Human Rights Council, presented a very well-received new strategy framed by the concepts of “protect, respect and remedy” to replace the ridiculous era of corporate self-regulation on the issue.
I must admit that I continue to have great unease about inertia vis-à-vis sustainability, however. The Compact’s goal of increasing from 6,000 to 20,000 company signatories in 10 years seems rather uni-dimensional and lacking in aggressiveness. We still seem to be nibbling at the edges of the transformation challenge.
Reflecting this, a meeting theme was the need to take meaningful action on a bigger scale and in greater depth. We’d better hold ourselves all accountable for achieving that when we reconvene in three years for the next Compact Leaders Summit.
[1] A protected experimental space where the usual rules and procedures of the sponsoring organization do not apply. If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
