“We finally let off our last two passengers, celebrity artist Wyclef Jean and a young orthopedic surgeon from Grand Rapids, a father of four who had been in Haiti since day three performing emergency amputations with borrowed farm equipment,” Swartz recounts. “That gave me thirty-five minutes of one-on-one time with Bill, who I never get to be alone with. But I don’t think we said a word to each other the rest of the trip.”

Swartz and Shore were likely in shock. The full-blown mental processing of what they had just endured in and around Haiti would begin later, as they assimilated back into their previous routines. As part of his re-acclamation process, Swartz wrote a series of downloads to Timberland stakeholders – including a Fast Company blog post, which summarizes his takeaways, and a personal letter to employees entitled: “Bearing Witness to Haiti,” which provides a remarkable play-by-play account of his physical and emotional experience.

“I felt I needed to get this off my chest,” says Swartz. “So I wrote about the heroism of the many doctors we saw, the heartbreak of the destruction, the inspiration I felt with Bill and Wyclef, and the indignation I felt at the world’s well-intended but inept efforts to cope with this disaster.”

Also, Swartz says, he wanted to leave people with a solid indication of why a boot-making CEO would personally venture “to hell and back,” as he puts it, despite the risks involved in doing so. Just prior to his trip, reports of street violence in Haiti had escalated as millions of citizens struggled to survive a series of powerful aftershocks without adequate food, water, shelter, government or emergency support. Given the magnitude of the situation, how could a few individuals – let alone a corporate CEO – possibly make a significant difference? And besides, what would Swartz and the Timberland organization stand to gain from such a venture?

“Before I left for this hastily-planned trip, people  – many of them rightfully disgruntled family members – demanded to know what I hoped to accomplish,” Swartz says. “I always replied, honestly, that I didn’t know and wouldn’t know until it happened.”

But Swartz discovered answers in Haiti – several of which hold significance for business leaders interested in blending commerce with conscience. “[What I learned was that] CEO as disaster volunteer is not a good model. But, CEO as witness — that is a different story,” he says. “What my eyes have seen, my heart has felt. And so this voyage is just beginning.”

World-Changing Leadership

World-changing business leadership requires three things: enhanced perspective – the ability to see clearly issues and patterns of significance that others don’t; personal resolve – the sheer determination to make a positive difference in the world; and formative relationships – the collaborative connections that amplify individual and organizational effectiveness. While in Haiti, Swartz solidified all three.

The experience appears to have permanently bonded Swartz, Shore and Wyclef. Swartz and Shore, who remain dear friends, serve on each other’s boards and recently confirmed their commitment to the Timberland-Share Our Strength cause partnership. Swartz also agreed to serve on Wyclef’s Yéle Haiti Foundation board in an effort to deepen their existing relationship.

The Timberland-Yéle Haiti alliance has resulted in notable innovations since it was formed back in 2009, including a successful line of eco-conscious boots. For every pair of Timberland Earthkeepers™ Yéle Haiti boots sold, Timberland donates $2 to Yéle Haiti to support restoration and environmental education projects in Haiti.

After the earthquake struck, the relationship took a necessary turn. Wyclef was in Haiti helping to deliver aid, collect dead bodies from the streets and, via CNN and other international news sources, broadcast the urgent need for more efficient disaster relief. At the same time, Yéle Haiti was accused of financial impropriety. That was when Swartz realized he needed to stand by Wyclef in a literal sense. In addition to publicly voicing his support, Swartz joined forces with him on the ground.

“Wyclef is a man of many faces,” writes Swartz in his letter to employees. “We know him as a musician and a celebrity, for sure, but if I jump ahead and tell you about [who I saw in] Wyclef by the end of this voyage, I would speak of an immensely gentle, noble, powerful man — one part dreamer, one part prophet, one part revolutionary. And one part real friend.”

In fact, Clef (as Swartz now calls him) proved himself full of surprises during their Haiti voyage. Upon landing in Port-au-Prince, he casually announced that he had arranged for a meeting between their burgeoning convoy – which now included Swartz, Clef, Shore, action movie star Vin Diesel and an armed security detail – and the President of the Dominican Republic, Leonel Fernandez.

“There I am decked out in my disaster duds: Timberland hiking boots, cargo pants, travel shirt, baseball cap, and Smartwool base layer.  Not exactly presidential visit attire,” recounts Swartz. “Clef whips out a suit he brought, just in case.”

The meeting proceeds and Swartz is struck by the surreal nature of it all. “There’s Vin and the gun show flexing in one chair, the President looking presidential, Clef suited up, and me in my ‘let’s go hiking’ look.”

Despite his dorky get-up, Swartz, whose Dominican Republic-based boot factory employs approximately 1,800 local citizens and has operated in the country for 25 years, jumped at the opportunity to put his personal resolve into play. He helped do what previous negotiators had failed to: temporarily open the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti so that vital supplies could flow through.

“What I said was: “Señor Presidente, history is watching. How do you want to be judged? Haitians are dying because aid is not reaching the people, and we can help solve that  problem—with your help. From our warehouses in the Dominican Republic, Timberland can consolidate and ship by our trucking network. Yéle Haiti is prepared to receive and distribute the aid. Are you prepared to let the trucks go through without the usual bureaucracy?”

President Fernandez agreed. With that, Swartz turned his attentions to the Timberland team, both in the Dominican Republic and back in New England. Failure to move food and supplies across the boarder was no longer an option, Swartz realized, and so he instructed his staff accordingly: “Don’t tell me that you can’t find a way to get stuff across the border,” he told them. “If stuff gets stuck at the border because you guys can’t figure out an innovative way to get the job done, please understand the consequences. If you have to beg, borrow or steal – just make it happen.”

And they did. Later that day, Swartz’s convoy arrived in Cite Soleil – the City of the Sun –  one of the worst slums in Port-au-Prince. In his letter to employees, Swartz portrays a vivid account of his experience handing out 8,000 hot meals to a crowd of starving people. Here is an extended passage:

…Clef says: “Not a lot of blanche (white people) in Cite Soleil. Should be interesting.” Just what I’m looking for – interesting. Because as the convoy weaves through the city, I am reduced to holding the video camera in my lap and filming my knee. I can’t believe the physical destruction. Nor the swarm of humans walking. People walking in the streets — this is one of the overwhelming images of this voyage. Where are they going? What are they seeking? Walking, everywhere. Streets choked with dust and detritus and despair, and folks out walking. Whole blocks just leveled…

We are in the Cite to feed the hungry. We’ve  already seen a UN convoy heading from the airport to distribute food and water — white armored personnel carriers, soldiers in body armor and combat gear, turret gunners manning loaded weapons, sirens blaring, trucks roaring through the clogged streets — just to hand out fifty pound bags of rice. Clef reminds me that good intentions don’t feed people. Fifty pound bags of of rice are not all that helpful when there is no pot, no cooking fire, and no clean water anywhere with which to cook the rice.

The Yéle model is a little different — we  brought food from the Dominican Republic, food that Yéle purchased, and somehow, in this destroyed city, Clef’s team cooked 8,000 hot meals of Haitian cuisines (goat stew).  Someone “found” 8,000 styrofoam takeout trays from one of the  destroyed restaurants somewhere in town. And found a truck. Here’s the truck, here’s the meals, here’s Clef with a bullhorn shouting in Creole, and here is a mighty river of the hungry, lining up to be fed. With sweat pouring off of everyone, we began to hand out the meals.

It started “OK,” meaning I’m handing meals to human beings, little kids in Creole or French saying “thanks.” I am trying to say something in French for encouragement, we are working hard in the sunny version of hell, but despite everyone’s best efforts, all of a sudden, it starts to get tense. The Yéle volunteers are shouting at the folks in line in Creole: “don’t push, don’t push,” but you could see in the eyes of the mothers and the fathers and the children, everyone watching the pile of cooked meals in the back of the truck get smaller and smaller and a sense of despair and maybe even panic: “Will I get a meal for my child before they run out?”  And so all of a sudden, the business of Sunday lunch heads in the wrong direction — the river of hungry humans becomes a raging river, pressing forward, starting to crush each other and us. And so the security guys – with good  intentions – shove themselves in front of us, and everyone started taking out their weapons. I heard safeties being taken off and I knew we were not far from a really bad situation.

At this point I was kinda crushed behind a wall of security people, up against the open back of the truck. In front of me, not three humans deep away, there was a little girl. And someone must have stepped on her or something – she started to cry. In the raging ocean of human suffering—her tears and her fear was too much for me. So I reached between two security guys and put my hand on her and shouted in French: “It’s OK, I’m gonna get you.” I couldn’t lift her up; I was wedged too tightly. But now I was back in CEO mode and so I said to the security guy in front of me: “get me that little girl.” And he did. Lifted her up and passed her back to me and I held her tight, in my arms, and she was sobbing and so was I.  I held onto her, maybe eight years old, talking to her in French, and after about 30 seconds she stopped crying.  Because the crushing that was hurting her—that’s gone now. I’m holding her and we’re behind a security guy and so she’s not going to get crushed. So she stopped crying.

Kills me. My view of the world says, she should have still been crying.  But her view of the world is: “No. I may not have a home, I may be hungry, I may be living in hell – but that’s normal. That isn’t worth crying over. If someone is hurting me on top of all that, then I’ll cry.” I handed her a meal and off she went – as if to say: “I’m going back to the normal despair of my day and I can handle that, don’t need your help, thanks a million and have a good day.”

We went back to handing out the food. The crush didn’t go away, but the fear of a bad scene did. Everyone got their heads around the fact that we had 8,000 meals — not  8,001. So if you get one, great, if you don’t…I don’t know what. Clef exhorting the crowd; people shouting, crying, waiting…I’m still kinda pinned against the truck when, from under the truck, a little brown hand reaches out and grabs my cargo calf. Scared the hell out of me. I  look down, and there is a little hand clutching my leg. Can’t see the child — he or she has crawled through the densest crush of people I’ve ever seen, wriggled under the truck, and grabbed me — signaling: “I beat the line, now give me a meal.” I slipped one down to the hand; the hand grabbed it and vanished.  My heart still has not come back — a child, figuring out how to get a meal…

This is just one of a series of intense experiences that left Swartz traumatized, and yet focused on what needed to be done. “How am I feeling today? I don’t know. I don’t feel so good,” he says. “I still haven’t yet got my mind around the question: How can we let this happen?”

Swartz admits to being far less patient today than he was before his trip, particularly toward those who perceive insurmountable challenges. “If a small-scale boot maker from New Hampshire, a prophet dreamer called Wyclef and a social justice guru like Bill Shore can take a field trip to Haiti and as a consequence, 8,000 people get served and a [border opens], you can’t tell me it can’t be done,” he says. “This isn’t in my, Clef’s or Billy’s job description – and yet I’ve got the pictures, and I can show you the faces of the people we helped. So when folks say it’s an impossible situation, that’s just not true. We have the intellectual capital. We have the resources. The question is: do we have the will to make the hard choices?”

The will is alive and present at Timberland. As an outdoor company with a direct connection to the environment and local population, Timberland promises to pursue both reforestation projects that repopulate Haiti’s more desolate areas with newly planted trees, as well as broader initiatives that help struggling citizens to help themselves. “We have a strength to share,” Swartz says, “and we are going to share it.”

“Most consumers don’t know where the gold in their products comes from, or how it is mined,” says NoDirtyGold.org, a group that encourages retailers to cease carrying gold that comes from illegal sources.  “Gold mining is a dirty industry: it can displace communities, contaminate drinking water, hurt workers, and destroy pristine environments.”

Dirty gold is no marginal issue. According to a recent 60 Minutes report, dirty gold mining is rather pervasive, and is also responsible for “the deadliest war since WWII.” Five million people have reportedly died in the Democratic Republic of Congo in a war primarily funded by gold mined in the country by warlords, and then smuggled out to be sold in retail stores around the world. Could that bracelet you just bought at Wal-Mart have come from illegal gold originated in Congo? According to 60 Minute’s findings, it is a vague possibility.

As part of an in-depth investigative research process, 60 Minutes talked to some of the Nation’s premier gold retailers in order to determine which companies could trace their gold back to a particular mine. One retailer, Tiffany & Co., said it could trace nearly all of its gold back to a particular mine in Utah. On the other hand, Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest purveyor of gold, was far less certain about the origin of its products. The company said it plans to trace the source of 10 percent of its gold products by 2010. But given the scope of the tragedy in Congo, critics say Wal-Mart’s plan leaves much to be desired.

“Wal-Mart has moved so dramatically and impressively on its sustainability initiatives, that it’s surprising, and disappointing, to see them moving so tentatively on dirty gold,” says Gil Friend, author of The Truth About Green Business and CEO of sustainability consulting firm Natural Logic. “Their goal is too low, and their pace is too slow.”

As Friend and 60 Minutes point out, if Wal-Mart were to demand traceability all the way back to the mine on all the gold that it sells, it could have tremendous commercial implications for the industry – not to mention help put an end to a tragic war. In appreciation of this fact, Wal-Mart just signed on to support NoDirtyGold’s “Golden Rules” of gold mining, along with retailers Kmart, JCPenny, Blue Nile, Van Cleef & Arpels and many others.

Grassroots campaign support is at least an optimistic sign. It represents a first step toward ethical gold sourcing and sends a message to the market that will hopefully help to kick off the process of purging illegal gold from the global supply chain. But as gold industry insiders point out, in order to successfully shift to a socially just and truly sustainable industry “gold standard,” there is still quite a distance to travel and also, systemic issues to consider. For instance, to what extent are communities around the world affected by gold mining? And what about the industry’s overall ecological footprint?

“Customers need to understand that the environmental impact of gold mining in our own country is quite devastating, even though the US is a developed country with strong environmental policies,” says Meghan Connolly Haupt, founder of San Franciso-based sustainable fine jewelry company C5. “The largest mine on earth is actually in Utah and measures 2.5 miles wide and one mile deep. It is visible from outer space. This is an important piece of information for consumers because it helps shatter the perception that the issues associated with mining are exclusive to developing countries.”

Haupt explains that no matter where it occurs, gold mining is associated with the destruction of habitats and volumes of waste. One gold ring results in more than 30 tons of mine waste, she says. And that’s a quantity that continues to go almost completely unchecked. Where are the industry standards and safeguards?

“The industry as a whole has operated in almost the same way for many decades with little regard for the environmental and social impact,” says Haupt. “Lack of customer demand is often quoted as the reason the industry has been slow to change. But mining is a global industry and there are no universally accepted standards or industry certifications at this time. Those companies with the resources to devote to promoting change are often those that are the most stifled by existing operations.”

Perhaps that’s why large retailers lag behind pure-play, sustainable jewelers like C5 in terms of sustainable performance. In C5’s case, the supply chain is miniscule by comparison, so clearly there is a built-in advantage. Innovative, sensible and sensitive methodologies are a lot easier to implement and achieve.

Haupt crafts jewelry made with either recycled or fair-trade metal, using processes with minimal social and environmental impact. As her company reminds consumers, every piece of jewelry purchased from C5 versus a mainstream jeweler is one less that contributes to pollution, destruction of habitats, forced labor, displacement of communities and other negative impacts.

“I started C5 company to help create a systemic change in the jewelry sector,” says Haupt. “By leading the sustainable jewelry movement, we are helping to raise the standard of business, which translates into positive economic development in some of the world’s most impoverished countries.”

C5 is just now launching its first two collections of finished jewelry, and according to Haupt the company will be expanding those lines in 2010. Though as a start-up C5’s financial future is somewhat uncertain, its value proposition is abundantly clear. Talk about your statement pieces.

Going in, there was significant skepticism about the developed world’s ability to work with emerging economies in order to come to a workable agreement on how to share the burdens related to climate change. Now, with only a moderately aggressive climate change agreement in place, the IEA estimates that global oil consumption will continue to rise – and with it, greenhouse gas emissions, international tensions, and the race of top oil firms to tap into the world’s reserves wherever and however they can.

Deep in the trenches of Ecuador lies an unfortunate victim of the developed world’s unwillingness to more rapidly taper its addiction to fossil fuels. It is a primal rainforest – an incredibly pristine and biodiverse region, holding the greatest known selection of trees, insects and amphibians on earth. The Amazon rainforest serves a distinct purpose for humanity, providing essential nutrients, absorbing large quantities of carbon dioxide and emitting oxygen into the atmosphere. It is home to several indigenous communities, including the Achuar, Shuar, and Kichwa peoples, who have lived there for millennia.

Over 35 oil firms keep a keen eye on this precious ecosystem, as they have great incentive to unearth what lies beneath. “We’ve been following oil and gas development in the Amazon since 2004 and the picture has changed before our eyes,” Matt Finer of Save America’s Forests told The Guardian back in 2008. “When you look at where the oil and gas blocks are, they overlap perfectly on top of the peak biodiversity spots, almost as if by design, and this is in one of the most, if not the most, biodiverse place on Earth.”

According to a recently published research report from Save America’s Forests, there are now 180 oil and gas blocks (ongoing extraction projects) covering 688,000 kilometers of forest in the Western Amazon alone. Many of the blocks cover protected areas, such as national parks, that were originally established for biodiversity protection. The oil blocks invade indigenous community living territories, which is why community members have attempted to organize themselves, taking grassroots and legal action against oil firms.

“The Shuar and Achuar peoples of the Ecuadorian Amazon want it to be known that the position of our communities is ‘no’ to oil exploration, ‘no’ to dialogue and negotiation, ‘no’ to deforestation, ‘no’ to contamination, and ‘no’ to all oil activities,” says Bosco Najamdey, President of the Shuar Federation on Amazonwatch.org, a website dedicated to depicting indigenous community efforts against oil firms ConocoPhillips, Chevron, Hunt Oil and others.

In a November 2009 letter issued to Hunt Oil CEO Ray Hunt, tribal leaders sent a fervent message:

“The area in dispute, besides being a declared nature reserve, crosses the headwaters of several important river basins, and lies in the buffer zones of Manu and Bahuaja Sonene National Parks, two of the most biodiverse national parks in the world…

Ten indigenous communities live around and benefit from the reserve. It is their ancestral territory. They were never consulted by the Peruvian government or Hunt Oil and are opposed to the operations. FENAMAD (the Native Federation of the Río Madre de Dios) has repeatedly protested the company’s operations and recently filed an injunction against the company based on the potential damage to the watershed and the lack of consultation. Thus far Hunt has refused to cede to any of FENAMAD’s demands and the government has sent only low-level officials to talks and armed forces to patrol the area rather than hold meaningful talks with the indigenous communities.”

Whether oil firms like Hunt operating in the region will acknowledge tribal voices and leave the rainforest in tact, or whether they will press on with exploration projects, potentially leading to future fatal clashes between protesting locals and the government’s armed forces, remains to be seen. But clearly, the Amazon’s indigenous communities have a rigorous battle ahead of them.

From a legal perspective it isn’t clear which side has the upper hand. According to Save America’s Forests, local governments claim the authority to manage natural resources located on or below indigenous peoples territories for the public interest. Thus far, when the government has concluded that opening the rainforest to extraction projects benefits the public – generating energy, tax dollars, jobs and so forth – they have done so without prior informed consent from indigenous communities. On the other hand, indigenous communities protest the lack of consultation. They claim that their existing property and territory rights allows them the right to free, prior and informed consent regarding proposed extractive projects on their lands.

As tapping into the world’s remaining oil and gas reserves becomes more costly and difficult for corporations, tension in the rainforest builds. Do indigenous communities stand a chance against the will of governments supported by Hunt, Chevron and ConocoPhillips? What will it take to save the most priceless real estate on earth?

Expanding Worldviews

The Achuar, Shuar, and Kichwa peoples have one thing that oil companies don’t: ancient wisdom. If effectively leveraged, it is hypothesized that such wisdom could translate to a groundswell of public support for the ‘save the rainforest’ cause. Ancient wisdom could potentially build bridges of mutual understanding between indigenous communities and mainstream Western culture. Ultimately, it could help win the ongoing “Amazon oil war” in a way that benefits all humanity.

The Amazon rainforest’s indigenous leaders, along with strategic partners here in the United States, envision a sweeping wisdom-sharing mission to be carried out. The Pachamama Alliance, a San Francisco-based non-profit group dedicated to preserving the rainforest by empowering indigenous communities, has stepped in to carry this wisdom-sharing process forward.

“Hundreds of organizations have formed and are doing important work addressing virtually every level of the (rainforest destruction) problem. And yet, rainforests continue to fall, by some estimates at the rate of 10 million trees per day,” says Pachamama on its website. “Our goal is to successfully combine the best elements of worldviews into a single global vision, an alloy that blends the intellectual and scientific prowess of the modern world, with the deep and ancient wisdom of traditional cultures. This is the commitment which underlies all of our work.”

Pachamama co-founders Lynne and Bill Twist recently announced the formation of an “Urgency Coalition” campaign planned for 2010, which aims to “wake up, motivate and inspire” people around the world through communications that impart bits of ancient wisdom. Portland-based advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy, creator of Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign, has been tagged as the creative force behind the initiative.

“The next four years [are] critical if we are to reach the tipping point in human thinking that will be necessary to achieve environmental sustainability and social justice on the planet in our lifetimes,” says Pachamama. According to Pachamama, the Urgency Coalition campaign will set a high bar, aiming to transform the way people see the world.

In addition to executing transformative campaigns, Pachamama also hosts regularly scheduled rainforest trips, where ecotourists undergo total immersion in the Amazon experience and gain a new life perspective. “Become one of a handful of people to experience a direct, intimate encounter with the Achuar,” Pachamama says in its online marketing brochure. “Learn what it’s like to live in harmony with the Earth directly from the elders and shamans of one of the world’s oldest and most intact remaining dream cultures.” Apparently, this trip is as once-in-a-lifetime as it gets. When people see and experience what the Achuar’s have to offer and teach the Western world, their natural instinct is to want to spread the word virally.

“The experience was extraordinary,” says musician and environmental activist Christen Lien, who attended the Pachamama Alliance’s November 2008 ecotour. “What really struck me was the Achuar’s whole approach to life – the way families interact and the way the community functions as a whole. Everything is reciprocal. You take what you give and there is an awareness of the role that everyone plays within a larger system. They don’t even know what a power hierarchy is because to them it serves no purpose.”

Since returning from the Amazon, Lien has herself conducted a press tour, blogging about the experience, speaking to political and business audiences and conducting a series of radio interviews with NPR. “I’m amazed by how receptive and interested people are in what this culture has to share,” says Lien.

According to Lien, Westerners can get a more realistic picture of themselves and their potential fate by stepping outside of their world and seeing things through Achuar eyes. Tearing down million year-old forests to service short-term energy needs? Building petroleum-based products designed to last in landfills for 15,000 years? Not signs of an intelligent, enduring civilization.

The Achuar have lived in the rainforest for thousands of years, but have spent the last few decades integrating themselves into Western society in order to ensure their own survival. As oil companies are intensely organized in their pursuits, social isolation is no longer an option for the Achuar. Having established offices in key cities, they now maintain regular communication lines with the West.

However integrated and familiar the Achuar are with our ways, their mindset remains distinct. For one thing, the Achuar consider themselves guests rather than owners of the land and respect the rainforest’s delicate balance. “They take care of their home in order to better ensure their long-term survival,” says Lien. “It just makes sense.”

The Achuar are natural cradle-to-cradle manufacturers. The products and tools they use to enhance their lives are soon returned to the earth, just the way the earth supplied the raw materials in the first place.

Balance also reigns with respect to social relationships, as the differences between men and women are cherished. In Achuar culture, women are relied upon not only to give life, but also to heal it and to reign in the male desire for conquest. “Achuar women’s role is to say when,” says Lien. “They tell men when they’ve cut down enough trees, hunted enough animals, taken enough from the earth. And the men listen.” Imagine if Western women wielded that kind of power.

Lien says Achuar leaders make some important observations about Western culture, and that we should take heed for our own good and evolutionary benefit. For example, the Achuar perceive that Western world power currently resides with our culture’s de-facto shamans. Those would be the corporate marketers, talking heads, evangelists and politicians dominating the majority of our airwaves and selling the manufactured American dream, which often tempts us into mass consumption. Buying homes with huge mortgages, buying cars with mediocre gas mileage, working in jobs with glass ceilings, eating convenience foods produced in vast quantities are steps along the mainstream track, they observe. But as the Achuar point out, this path helps serve the interests of a chosen few while creating serious implications for the bulk of the world’s population.

The Achuar urge us to consider the implications of our collective dream, because in many ways our dream imposes hierarchies, power structures and tensions. It draws divisions between people. It prompts us to spend our lives chasing specific goals that others have convinced us will produce happiness. But do they?

“They kept saying this over and over,” says Lien. “Don’t give into the nightmare. Don’t feed into the greed. Change your dream, because then you will change your lives.”

Perhaps that is the leap of faith to contemplate this holiday season. If we can successfully transform our vision of ourselves, what we want and what we truly need, then reality will follow. I suspect Weiden+Kennedy, with its powerhouse creative team, will blast this and other Achuar messages through loud and clear. I look forward to that, and to the oil industry’s response to the Urgency Coalition campaign. Let’s hope they come back with something other than bulldozers.

Happy Holidays, everyone.

Last Christmas and Chanukah my son received, among other things, the Evenflo Exersauser, Baby Einstein Color Blocks and a Fisher Price Go Diego Boat Toy. While the Exersauser took a painfully long time to put together (the instructions might as well have been written in Chinese), both the Color Blocks and Boat Toy were recalled for a violation of lead paint standards. How do I know this? Because I monitored their status on the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s (CPSC) website. How would an average parent who does not obsess about such matters know this? Most wouldn’t, as virtually no marketer spends as much recalling a dangerous product as promoting its sale.

The CPSC’s list of 2009 toy recalls for lead and related safety violations is shockingly long, particularly considering the publicity uproar surrounding the 2007 lead-laced toy recalls, where Mattel Inc. alone took back over 1.5 million toys. Are toy industry standards improving? If they are, then it seems to be happening rather slowly. Companies including Various Toys, DND Imports and TDI International recalled products for lead paint violations in 2009, despite new consumer safety legislation banning lead, beyond minute levels, in children’s toys.

Since corporate standards sometimes fail and CPSC auditing resources are themselves limited, dangerous toys inevitably slip through the cracks. The actual number of lead-laced toys on our store shelves is surely higher than we realize. That’s a serious issue since even limited lead exposure can lead to life-long learning and behavioral disorders in children. My sense is that as long as China remains the world’s toy factory, parents get torpedoed by escalating safety and regulatory risks.

The environmental integrity of plastic toys is another matter for consideration, as parents are all but left in the dark as to the ecological and health-related impacts of the chemicals used during the manufacturing process. Many toys sold in the US are made from PVC, a poisonous plastic.

“PVC is the most toxic plastic for our health and the environment,” says the Center for Health, Environment and Justice in a recently published Fact Sheet on PVC and children. “No other plastic releases as many dangerous chemicals. These included dioxins, phthalates, vinyl chloride, ethylene dichloride, lead, cadmium, and organotins. There’s no safe way to manufacture, use or dispose of PVC products.”

There is also no sure-fire way for parents to determine which toys on Toys R’ Us shelves contain PVC and which do not, since no labeling standard exists for the industry. Material disclosure options are left up to individual companies, and most companies opt not to disclose much of anything. That begs a question: What is a concerned parent to do? On the upside, there are some wonderful online resources and product alternatives for those inclined to opt out of the black box, toxic toy system.

I recommend starting with the Green Guide, an online resource containing facts, environmental impact data, product comparisons and shopping information. Browsing through Green Guide it should become fairly clear that one need not sacrifice fun and ingenuity for peace of mind. From PVC and pthalate-free LEGOs to PlaSmart’s PlasmaCar and Radio Flyer’s Earth Wagon, the selection of toys on Green Guide is fairly broad. It includes selections from small as well as larger companies, indicating that that the trend toward eco-friendly toys is not a temporary fad, but rather a genuine shift in the global market.

Global to Green

At the Pottery Barn Kids Corte Madera store, the statement reads loud and clear: Green is here, the company is invested, and quality comes first. A huge wall of environmentally friendly products – cars, cranes, planes, trains, recycling and dump trucks made from sustainable rubberwood and painted with natural, water-based dyes; all-terrain vehicles made of 100 percent recycled eco-plastics; phthalate-free zoo animals and figurines; BPA-free Klean Kanteen® Water Bottles and other amusements – greets arriving customers and provides a wonderful selection of holiday gifts for choosy parents.

“One of Pottery Barn Kids top priorities is the health and safety of children as well as the environment,” says Christina Nicholson, Director of Sustainable Development at Williams-Sonoma Inc. “Offering simple, safe, high-quality products are founding principles of our brand, which is why we have such a variety of eco-friendly products. Our customers have asked for more unique, eco-friendly products and we are excited to be able to offer a broad assortment.”

Unlike so many other mainstream toy brands, Pottery Barn Kids sets a relatively high bar, not just for its designated eco-friendly products, but for everything it sells. Whereas toy industry standards determine 600 lead parts per million as an acceptable lead content range for products sold in the US, Pottery Barn Kids abides by an internal standard of 90 lead parts per million. The company also voluntarily tests for a variety of other compounds, including antimony (Sb), arsenic (As), barium (Ba), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), mercury (Hg), and selenium (Se). Remarkably, not every toy company does that.

Product development-wise, Nicholson sees expansion opportunities. “Customers are responding very well to our eco-friendly offerings,” she says. “They appreciate the benefits these products offer their home and children. With each season we will focus on growing our eco-friendly product assortment in all categories – toys, furniture, textiles and décor.”

In addition to eco-friendly toys, Pottery Barn Kids also offers FSC-Certified furniture and organic bedding. In 2008 the company reintroduced its Anywhere Chair, which has long been been a staple in the Pottery Barn Kids assortment, with a new “hybrid” insert made from 30 percent sustainable soy-based foam. Further plans for eco-makeovers on existing products, as well as the development of new eco-product lines through partnerships with manufacturers Sprig Toys, Plan Toy and Green Toys, are reportedly in the works.

“We are parents too and we are committed to making sure everything we sell is as safe for our customer’s kids as we demand that it be for our own,” says Nicholson. “We recognize that there is much more to be done, and we are committed to growing even more eco-friendly as a company.”

Nicholson’s attitude is a signal to parents – and smart marketers, too. Some US toy companies puff up their “rigorous standards.” Others blame lax oversight on the part of the Chinese government, or on the part of US regulators for their quality-related woes. On the other hand, Pottery Barn Kids, having made a significant investment in green toys while humbly communicating environmental and safety-related ambitions for the future, gives people a better sense of assurance. They neither over-promise nor under-deliver. And that’s the key to building trust.

A whopping 65 to 70 percent of New York City’s carbon emissions are projected to come from buildings, whereas very few examples of pre-war commercial building energy retrofits exist anywhere in the United States. That means the Empire State Building is literally clearing a path for thousands of other buildings to follow. It happens to be doing so with a visible commitment to the principles behind the sustainability movement – people, planet and profit.

In an effort to build stakeholder advocacy and encourage more commercial buildings to initiate similar energy retrofit initiatives, owner Anthony Malkin of Empire State Building Company has made a remarkable commitment to transparency.  He has decided that the company will share all of the new processes and technologies it develops and lessons it learns during the retrofit with the public. “It is my hope that people will be able to take a look at what we did here and be able to replicate the process,” he says.

During the course of the retrofit, stakeholders can gain access to behind-the-scenes information, including the models and decision-making tools used to make the Empire State Building’s green retrofit possible. An interactive retrofit puzzle demonstrates how taking the right steps, in the right order – from refurbishing the building’s 6,500 windows for maximum overall energy use, to installing energy management systems that allow tenants to access energy use data, obtain online tips and benchmark themselves against other tenants – makes all the difference when it comes to increasing efficiency. The company even updates key learning obtained during the process of the retrofit, as well as its ongoing engagements with thought partners Rocky Mountain Institute, the Clinton Climate Initiative, Johnson Controls, Inc., and Jones Lang LaSalle.

Thus far, the project takeaways are quite compelling. For one thing, there is the importance of taking a “whole building” approach to design. “The good work which has been done to date [in green building retrofit] has focused on individual elements – a lighting system, a cooling tower,” Malkin explains. “You have to look at how all the elements – the lights, the cooling tower, the insulation – work together. You then look for the combination of measures which creates the greatest savings with the shortest payback period.”

Taking a whole-building approach to the retrofit design was beneficial in that it allowed Malkin’s team to stay within budgetary parameters. The team started by identifying baseline budgets for 23 existing retrofit-related projects and then examined how sustainable alternatives could affect costs. For instance, the team found big-ticket cost-savings items on six projects, including a multi-year cooling and air handling replacement system, central cooling plant replacement, exterior tower lighting and mid-pressure steam riser replacement. [For an interactive model of how these technologies work cohesively together to save energy,click here.]

The Value of Green

While each one of these technologies improves the building’s environmental performance – reducing greenhouse gas emissions, chemicals and pollutants while increasing air quality and recycling – a principle motive behind the energy retrofit is long-term value. Malkin envisions green buildings as higher quality buildings – buildings that produce superior cash flow resulting from reduced energy costs and tenant’s desire for a better way of living. If only sustainability were marketed that way.

“I am so tired of the directional and qualitative nature of the sustainability effort,” says Malkin. “We need to get away from this idea of ‘doing the right thing’ without quantifying what the right thing is. There is way too much dogma and what we need to get to is dollars and cents. Watts and BTUs.”

Dollars and cents wise, Malkin expects to gain a lot more than saved energy from his retrofit project. In addition to driving down utility, maintenance and repair costs, improvements on The Empire State Building are projected to result in increases in rent and occupancy rates due to enhanced value on updated services. Further income is also expected from new tenant offerings such as chilled water.

To achieve such financial upsides in green building, one has to think holistically. Malkin swears by his systemic approach: “Green to me is a set of practices,” he explains. “It’s recycling tenant waste, it’s recycling construction debris, it’s green pest control, it’s green cleaning solutions, it’s using recycled materials in your build-outs and in your common areas. These things can be done at a similar cost in dollars and they are definitely less painful to the environment.  Quantifiable energy efficiency retrofits are different…they are energy saving and money making for the landlord and tenants.”

Malkin’s perspective is that ultimately, there is nothing “ungreen” about the idea of urban living. But in the mainstream environmental movement, green is rarely associated with towering steel skyscrapers. Changing the population’s mental imagery is a core objective of Malkin’s. That is why, as part of the Empire State Observatory visit, the company is putting together a walk-through explanation of the retrofit program, to give people a sense of how the environment they are in works in harmony with what supports and surrounds it.

“I had a series of museum installation designers come and present some ideas for the walk-through,” Malkin explains. “One of the elements suggested was visually projecting a “canopy of trees” on the top of the elevators, so there’s an image of green as you’re looking up. I said, “get rid of the trees!” One of the biggest problems is that people think of the environment as someplace you go to visit, and then you come back to your life.”

The refurbished Empire State Building represents a new way of urban life – a new American ideal. As President Bill Clinton recently said in a video describing the retrofit: “This project is not only good for the earth, it also makes real financial sense. If even a fraction of the buildings in the United States or our world were to carry out similar ones, the impact would be profound. More projects like this will continue to create incredible opportunities for change across America, and across the world.”

In the midst of Hollender’s widely publicized transition (and on his way to holiday in Greece, in fact), I managed to catch a few moments of his time – along with a welcome burst of inspiration.

Q: You’ve lead Seventh Generation for more than 20 years, growing the brand from a fledging start-up to a household name. What prompted your decision to step down as CEO – and what’s next for you?

A: I decided to step down for two reasons. First, to continue to lead the business to its greatest potential in a highly competitive marketplace requires a depth of experience that I simply don’t have. A business of $150 million requires more than my intuition. Second, my passion for fulfilling Seventh Generation mission “to inspire a more conscious and sustainable world by being an authentic force for positive change,” can best be fulfilled if I now focus all of my time in it’s direct pursuit through speaking, writing, educating and influencing other business. I have two books in progress, a TV show (Big Green Lies) and a significant corporate educational program that we will announce in the next 30 days – so I won’t have trouble keeping busy.

Q: Seventh Generation has set a goal to grow its annual business from its current level of about $150 million per year to over $1 billion in the coming years. That’s aggressive. What are the keys to achieving this?

A: Remain radically transparent, stay true to who we are, pursue our mission with passion, hire the most talented people we can find, listen carefully to our customers and make sure we always have more capital than we think we need.

Q: Are you concerned that, with rapid growth, any aspect of the brand will become diluted? How will the company ensure that this doesn’t happen?

A: That will always be a critical concern. So far we strengthened our culture as we have grown by investing time and resources to ensure our community remains deeply connected to our mission. Personally, I will remain directly involved in ensuring that our purpose isn’t compromised as we grow. We have also developed some powerful institutions and rituals that help ensure we stay on course, from our annual all-company retreat to frequent meetings with senior management where staff members are encouraged to ask tough questions. The success and vibrancy of our brand in the marketplace and its impact and relationship with consumers is directly tied to the investment by the very people who drive, mold, invent and reinvent Seventh Generation day in and day out – their passion and authenticity is Seventh Generation’s vitality and this directly extends to our consumers. They relate to it.

Q: What do you say to those who those who worry that by bringing in Mr. Maniscalo, a Quaker/PepsiCo executive, Seventh Generation is “selling out?”

A: Chuck is here precisely so we won’t have to sell out. Most successful mission driven companies have been sold to large CPG companies because they couldn’t scale up independently. We’re acquiring the talent to ensure our independence and commitment to our mission.

Q: You’ve had an inspiring career and are credited not only for pioneering green cleaning products, but green business practices in general. What’s the greatest lesson you’ve learned — and if you could, is there anything that you would do differently?

A: I spend no time ever thinking about reinventing the past. There is much to much work to do that lies ahead of us. But the greatest lessons I’ve learned are that we need revolutionary, not incremental change. Businesses and NGO’s must cooperate more effectively. We need to move from being less bad to being truly good, and we need to recognize that the goal of sustainability is not enough. We must regenerate our planet. Human development represents unlimited potential, and anything is possible.

Amen to that.

Kozlowski is absolutely right.

The premier financial institutions of today – AIG, Barclay’s, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch,Citigroup, Goldman Sachs – make Enron’s 2001 accounting scandal look like child’s play. After taking $17.5 trillion in taxpayer money (in the form of loans, guarantees and bailouts), top-tier US banks Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase and others experienced record earnings in 2009, prompting them to dole out an unprecedented $29.7 billion in executive bonuses. Citibank and Bank of America increased interest rates on credit cards and basic checking, boosting fees by as much as 50 percent. Meanwhile, the industry as a whole remains staunchly opposed to consumer protection reforms of any kind, raising serious ethical questions. 

Have mainstream banks learned a single lesson from Enron’s past mistakes? Apparently not. And what’s more, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) – which was created in an effort to improve disclosure provisions, ensure auditor independence and strengthen corporate governance procedures – hasn’t made a drip of difference. There seems to be less financial transparency and oversight today than there was before SOX was instated in 2002. Big banks want SOX overturned, and they might have their way.

But even as legislation flounders and banking giants stay their course, the public moves in a new direction. A record number of people are flocking toward reputable and transparent companies like Boston-based Wainwright Bank & Trust and Bristol-based Triodos Bank.

Here are two community banks that, albeit on a smaller scale, manage to thrive despite the ongoing credit and investor confidence crises. While Triodos experienced 8 percent growth during 2008, Wainwright’s first quarter 2009 profits increased an impressive 33 percent.

“All this turmoil in the financial markets has continued to create opportunities for us to capture additional market share,” says Wainwright founder and co-chairman Richard Glassman. “We are pleased that there continues to be a market for our products and approach.”

The “approach” of which Glassman speaks is key. In fact, both Wainwright and Triodos sell the same products that you can find at any big bank – checking accounts, savings accounts, loans, etcetera. That’s not what drives their performance. It’s how they sell their products, how they conduct business overall, that sets them apart from their peers.

At Wainwright a socially progressive agenda represents an ever-important second bottom line to the company. “One platform sustains the other,” Glassman explains. “Our business success is fueled by the difference we make in our community.”

To date Wainwright has issued over $700 million in loans to community development projects like affordable housing and HIV/AIDS services. Remarkably, it has experienced virtually no defaults on those loans. In addition Wainwright has the highest level of customer loyalty and lowest rate of employee turnover in its industry.

Triodos also thrives by helping to improve people’s lives for the better.  “We want to act as a bridge between savers and investors on the one hand, and sustainable companies and projects that need financing on the other,” explains board Chairman Peter Blom. “[With us] savers and investors know what happens with their money. In this respect, the banking sector has failed badly in recent years.”

Wainwright and Triodos aren’t the only ones profiting from systemic failures on Wall Street. Community banks across America and Europe are benefiting, as customers seek institutions they can trust.

At the UK’s Co-Operative Bank for instance, pre-tax 2008 profits increased 69 percent from 2007. At  California Community Bank, first quarter 2009 growth increased 26 percent from 2008. And at Liberty Bell Bank in Cherry Hill, N.J., first quarter 2009 growth increased 14 percent.

A recent survey conducted by Independent Community Bankers confirms that these results are not atypical. Community banks are getting new customers at a faster rate than in the past, with 57 percent experiencing an increase in new retail customers and 47 percent seeing an increase in new business customers compared to last year.

Though not immune to the challenges facing all financial institutions, community banks do offer realistic and profitable alternatives to traditional banking methods.

To start with, rather than serving the narrow interests of a few shareholders, community banks acknowledge wider stakeholder communities. As opposed to treating lower-income customers and charitable organizations as a liability, they view them as a worthy opportunity. Instead of hiding risk, they openly disclose their investments and methods. As an alternative to pushing product, they prioritize people and relationships. And in lieu of imposing pre-set terms, many community banks structure loans around the needs of individual borrowers.

“When Wainwright was founded, it was one of fourteen thousand banks in an undifferentiated industry with fungible products and commodity pricing,” says Glassman. “Now we’ve ended up as one of our region’s best-known banks with a constituency that knows exactly who we are and absolutely loves what we do differently.”

The fact is that community banks are genuinely different, which is why they are the preferred choice by more people around the world. Their lessons turn conventional banking wisdom on its head. Let’s just hope it stays that way.

Last week three Shell executives – Bjorn Edlund, Executive Vice President of Communications, Nick Welch, Head of Policy and External Relations and Nick Wood, Vice President of Communications – joined the Justmeans community for a provocative conference call about the Wiwa v. Shell case and the company’s recent $15.5 million human rights settlement.

“We are trying to make ourselves available by using different avenues of social media to reach out to more people with a response,” says Shell’s Welch. “It’s our goal to respond as human beings, not as some big corporate machine. If this conversation stimulates people to want to learn more, then that will be all the better.”

The conference call was illuminating for those participating, and also timely. Just hours before the call took place, news broke of a terrorist attack on a major oil pipeline supplying Shell’s Bonny export terminal in Nigeria. In an e-mail sent to various news organizations, the militant group claiming responsibility, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), described their motive:  “The region where the wealth within the city has been built remains mired in poverty and lack. The people who own the resources have no stake in it, for which we have now waged a war to emancipate.”

Seemingly unruffled by the transpiring drama, Shell executives explained why this is only the latest in a string of similar attacks against the company’s Niger Delta facilities. “There is unrest because people see oil and gas operations generating billions of dollars in revenue, but people aren’t getting any of the benefits from that,” says Wood. “Communities are targeting companies such as Shell because they want a greater share.”

As with most oil rich Nations, Nigeria’s oil resources are controlled by the Federal Government, which then issues oil exploration and production rights to corporate partners in exchange for a share of profits. Oil presently accounts for 95 percent of Nigeria’s earnings and 80 percent of the government’s total revenues. But most of Nigeria’s 30 million citizens live below the poverty line, with no access to electricity, clean drinking water or other amenities enjoyed by Westerners. To add insult to injury, citizens living close to Shell refineries can plainly see the gas flares that contribute significantly to local air and water pollution, as well as global warming. These variables converge to create a terrible tension.

“What started as action by communities has over the years grown into a criminal movement,” says Wood. “[MEND] is heavily armed. They steal our crude oil, they attack our facilities and they pose a large threat to our staff working in the Niger Delta.”

According to Shell over the past three years 133 company employees and contractors working in the Niger Delta have been kidnapped, and five have been killed in assaults. Attacks from MEND are estimated to have forced oil companies including Shell to shut down at least 133,000 barrels per day of oil production in the last month, diminishing corporate profits and reducing Nigeria’s oil output by as much as 40 percent. That lost income creates a big incentive for military government intervention.

In mid-May the Nigerian military launched an offensive against MEND, bombarding rebel camps from the air and sea and sending in three battalions of ground troops to hunt them down. The offensive is said to have done little to quell the group’s resolve, however. Military attacks such as this one are known to sometimes displace villagers from their homes and also prevent people from accessing humanitarian aid. If anything, the Nigerian military’s notorious “kill and go” strategy potentially encourages some elements of the insurgency to become even more determined. Given MEND’s motives and the remote mangrove creeks of the Niger Delta, industry and security experts say that it is virtually impossible to guard against future attacks.

With no end to the violence in sight, Nigeria’s president, Umaru Yar’Adua, offered amnesty to militants in the Niger Delta this past Friday as part of his strategy for helping to protect national security and oil industry interests. For its part, Shell says that it is placing more emphasis on community outreach initiatives that create economic, social and environmental benefits for Nigerian citizens, but at the end of the day there is only so much the company can do.

“When it comes to [establishing] law and order, that’s not a Shell issue. This is not the sort of situation where we can get reasonable thinking people in a room and talk about it and sort things out,” says Wood. “The long-standing feuds between different groups of people, the huge economic interests on the legal and illegal side of things, makes this quite an intractable situation and a very difficult area to be in.”

Facing serious economic and ethical challenges, Shell is in a tight spot. Should the company decide to withdraw from Nigeria, then it would lose one of its most important markets, as it controls almost half of the 2.5 million barrels of oil that Nigeria exports daily. On the other hand, should Shell remain in Nigeria, then it will continue to come up against the nearly insurmountable struggles of staying ahead of security risks and also, reframing the past.

The Ogoni Legacy

Ogoniland, the 404-square-mile area off the coast of the Gulf of Guinea, is where Shell’s troubles in Nigeria all began. The Ogoni people, who represent less than two percent of Nigeria’s population, rose to international attention after a massive public protest campaign against Shell was led by the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP).

MOSOP’s campaign is ongoing, although it is not a terrorist group and is in no way affiliated with MEND. Founded in 1990, MOSOP’s mandate is to use non-violent protests in order to promote democratic awareness; protect the environment; seek social, economic and physical development for the region; protect cultural rights and practices; and seek appropriate rights of self-determination for the Ogoni people.

Activist and author Ken Saro-Wiwa served as founding member and president of MOSOP until 1995, the year he died. According to the website www.wiwavshell.org, in 1994 Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni leaders were prevented by the Nigerian military from attending a protest gathering which left four Ogoni chiefs dead. The bodies of the four chiefs were never found. Despite the lack of evidence, the military government accused Saro-Wiwa and the eight other MOSOP members of causing the deaths, and arrested and detained all nine men. Eighteen months later, Saro-Wiwa and five others – John Kpuinen, Saturday Doobee, Daniel Gbokoo, Felix Nuate, and Dr. Barinem Kiobel – were executed. The military also conducted raids on 60 towns in Ogoniland and detained and beat several hundred men suspected of involvement with MOSOP.

Saro-Wiwa fought vigilantly for human rights and environmental justice for most of his career. He was nominated for a Nobel Prize and awarded the Right Livelihood Award and the Goldman Prize. Reportedly, his last words were: “Lord take my soul but the struggle continues.”

The lawsuit Wiwa v. Shell was filed in 1996 on behalf of 10 plaintiffs, who include family members of the deceased victims. According to the complaint, plaintiffs allege that Shell officials helped to supply Nigerian police with weapons during the 1990s, that they took part in security sweeps in parts of Ogoniland, and that they hired government troops that shot at villagers who protested against a pipeline. They also allege that Shell helped the government to capture and execute Saro-Wiwa and the other MOSOP members.

Shell firmly denies these charges and also says that it tried to get clemency for Saro-Wiwa and the eight other men. “What happened in Nigeria in 1995 was terrible. It was just the beginning of the problems we’ve had there,” says Edlund. “It has become a reputational burden for us.”

Shell hopes that its $15.5 million human rights settlement will help set a new tone for the future and provide the Ogoni people with some relief. An out-of-court settlement wasn’t necessarily the easy route, the company explains, but the most sensible one for all parties involved. “We were quite prepared to go to court and wanted to clear our name. We were confident that there was no evidence to show that we colluded with the government in any way, in any of the allegations that have been made as part of this case,” says Wood. “On the other hand, you look at the thirteen years that it has taken to get this far in the case. We were all looking forward to moving on, and this settlement seemed the best way to maximize the chance for reconciliation in Ogoniland.”

Lessons Learned

Regardless of what people believe about Shell’s history in Nigeria, one thing is absolutely certain. This is a company with a truly global perspective and a wealth of expertise that very few other companies have. These corporate assets could prove invaluable to the global community in years to come.

“There is something we can do so that something good comes out of this,” says Wood. “Even if you learn the painful way, you do learn, and you can pass that information along to others.”

At present Shell is engaged in a number of initiatives designed to ensure that its insights and experiences will not go to waste. Through the Voluntary Principles for Security and Human Rights, Shell shares its framework for maintaining safety and security of its operations, while also acknowledging the fundamental freedoms of its stakeholders. Similarly, through theExtractive Industry Transparency Initiative, Shell shares best practices with governments, companies and civil society, also holds itself accountable to certain ethical standards. “We publish what we pay,” says Wood. “We make it clear what the revenue stream is, and how the share of income is distributed throughout the countries where we operate.”

With the confluence of political, economic, social and environmental forces simultaneously working for and against Shell’s interests, the company says it has learned why it is essential to build a business that is a welcome partner to people. The more Shell is embraced by local citizens, the lower its risks and operating costs will be, and the higher overall value the company stands to generate. Striking such a balance is complex, particularly in countries like Nigeria. Still, Shell seems determined to establish the necessary foundation.

“We haven’t got all of the solutions for improving local conditions in the areas where we operate, and neither have governments or NGOs,” says Edlund. “The game plan is to have a clear set of principles, clear governance within the company, and to recognize that [we] don’t live in a bubble, that [we] have to collaborate with other people that you can make some progress with.”