Report out from the Annual Conference
- Audience at the sold out conference
“Growth or Sustainability?” was the title of this year’s joint IEF-EBBF conference held in late September in the clean, simple and elegant nest in the forest that is the Depoort center in Nijmigen, Holland. Lots of talks, more workshops, an educational walk in the forest, good food, live music, and morning devotionals were some of the key ingredients to this year’s annual conference, but the main ingredient was, of course, the people—coming from dozens of countries in Europe and every other continent.
What follows are some highlights. For more complete coverage, and access to presentations, video clips and a blog with fuller reports of different sessions, go to this webpage.
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Thursday night registration and the usual catching up with friends unseen for at least a year, along with some wacky presentations activities for participants and speakers. TV show host Aram Aflatuni from Finland brought a sampling of presenters to the stage with varied drum rolls, and then ‘interviewed’ them before the audience. Friday morning was when the serious content began, with IEF secretary general Sylvia Karlsson taking the first whack at the central theme of the conference:
Almost 50% land surface has been transformed by direct human action. There are two million contaminated sites in Europe alone; water resources being depleted more rapidly than replenished; 2.4 million die every year particle air pollution; …the rise of sea levels; extinction rates are increasing sharply in ecosystems around world …; 60% of ecosystem services (wood fuel, genetic resources, pollination, etc.) are degraded. In a word, the Earth is operating in a no analogue state, unprecedented in the nature and magnitude of the changes it is going through.
The bottom line: Growth and sustainable are in conflict. At least for now.
They could be in less conflict, she indicated, if producers and consumers changed their time and scale horizons, from short term to long term visions. “If we value the future, this changes the whole economic accounting system”. And she pointed out that, actually, according to the Stern report, it is economically more feasible to avoid dangerous climate change than to adapt to it.
However, Ms. Karlsson noted, there would be no conflict in growth if the concept were redefined. The safest and surest way to do this is to redefine wealth. As a guide in this redefinition she quoted from the writings of the Bahá’í Faith. “It is clear that the honour and exaltation of man must be something more than material riches. Material comforts are only a branch, but the root is the good attributes and virtues which are the adornments of his reality.” If the development of ‘good attributes and virtues’ is the definition of growth, then there is no limit to man’s growth. And concluded: “The beauty of all this is when you pursue this kind of growth you don’t need that much stuff!”
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- Steve Karnik, CAO of the BIC
After lunch, Steve Karnik, CAO of the Bahá’i International Community (BIC), took on the dual challenge of redefining prosperity in order that its attainment may be compatible with sustainability along with the additional challenge of keeping the Dutch cheese filled drowsy listeners awake. The new definition of prosperity took into account the ‘fundamentally spiritual nature of the human being’.
Prosperity: "The presence/abundance of those ethical, social and material resources needed to develop the moral, intellectual and social capacities of individuals, communities and institutions. Prosperity begins with and within the individual. The degree to which individuals have the freedom, opportunity and conditions to develop and manifest their moral, intellectual and social capacities, individually and collectively is the degree to which a particular society will become prosperous."
He concluded with some ideas on how to measure movement towards this kind of prosperity, and shared some work that has been done developing spiritually-based indicators, a few of which include:
- The degree to which the concept of service as a path to individual development is both verbalized and practiced for social transformation – increase in leisure time and the percentage of leisure time devoted to service.
- Degree to which beauty (natural and man-made) is accessible in society and the degree to which the arts and literature flourish and provide a moral compass for society.
- Money spent on philanthropy (measured as a percentage of income) measured for individuals and nations.
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- John Patterson, former CEO of Kambay
John Patterson followed and provided one of the conference’s most concrete examples of applying spiritual principles to business. After years of service as a clergyman in Canada and then more in rural India, he and his wife “got to be 45, our kids were college age, we had no money, and we thought, ‘Well, we better do something about it.’ So we started Kambay, an IT company with two friends, and built on India’s growing strength in the computer science field.”
Having decided to devote my life to service, my question at the time was, ‘How do we get in to this dirty thing called business (I knew it wasn’t all that bad) and not get totally consumed by it?’ You see, I was going from doing service with just enough to eat, to being the owner of a tech-based business. So we agreed that the company must be built on principles that were important to us, and had long conversations about what these were. Many of these beliefs centered on the human factor, on the people who would be entrusting their lives to us (i.e. employees) and our clients. ‘If we look after our people,’ we said, ‘the company will grow well.’ We knew that when you’ve got people from different cultures and countries, the entire business depends on people being able to respect each other. No “I’m better than you” posture. We knew that this kind of respect had to do with the culture we built into our organization.
“We had seven corporate values, developed across the company with everyone’s participation.” These included: ‘We value respect for the individual’; ‘We value our ability to create and exceed high client expectations’, and ‘we value work that allows us to give back to our society’. But then came the real question. Here’s how he said it:
How do you translate these values into behavior? We did several things. We made it clear what people could expect from organization with regards to those values, and made explicit what kind of behavior will be rewarded and what is ‘taboo’ behavior. For example, with someone who is not performing well, taboo is not to deal with him and ignore the issue. We must help him, talk to him. We help people grasp these values from day one. When someone started to work with us, they received two whole days of orientation just on our values and ethics. These were full days, with the CEO, which demonstrated how important it was to us. Then there were regular reviews. We also really emphasized with those rising into leadership, whatever is embodied in your lives, that’s what’s going to be shown in lives of others. Because it’s not what you say, but how you manifest what you say.
And how did it go? “Well, we were initially funded by family and friends, then some venture capitalists invested in us. The first thing we told them about was our list of values. They agreed saying, ‘We’ll fund you because you led with your values and you’re the first we’ve seen do this’. Then we were listed on NASDAQ. And eventually we were bought by a major European consulting firm… One more thing that reflects our success is that we had a 92-95 retention rate in the IT sector, just incredible.”
After speaking about his current work with an NGO he created with his wife which focuses on fighting HIV/AIDS in Africa, promoting locally grown food and renewable power in Canada, and working on delegitimizing war for settling differences and conflicts, he concluded with these emotion-filled words: “When we meet in 20 years time, which no doubt will, we will request one thing of you. Please ask us if we are being true to our calling to serve, because that’s what we need from you.”
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- Arthur Dahl (right) talking to conference participant
For those who stayed up late on Friday night, the real wakeup on Saturday morning did not come in the form of shower or coffee, but through IEF president and longtime EBBF board member (among many other things) Arthur Dahl’s thrilling talk on “Ways forward to true prosperity”. In some way he looked like an Olympic athlete, cruising through 60 slides in less than 30 minutes with seemingly effortless grace, passing through the current state of the world, the rather grim outlook of the next few decades, the new values and system involved in a sustainable model of continued human life, and what that model would look like. After warning us that his talk could cause headaches and depression, and enumerating the grim environmental outlook, he came to the crux of the predicament:
Since we are operating on a limitless growth model with a shrinking resource base, our civilization is headed towards collapse. The question is when. If we continue on the current road at the current rate, says the model that though updated hasn’t changed since the 70s, around 2015 or 2020 we are going to be hitting a crisis of food, resources availability, industrial output, translating into a lower standard of living for all.
Retreating to a fortress of old values (and forgetting about such things as bananas and pineapples) and keeping the poor out isn’t possible. We have no option but to move towards a new, sustainable paradigm.
In this new paradigm we must redefine prosperity, and along with this, the kind of civilization we want to build. He used the following writings for inspiration on this theme:
Man’s merit lieth in service and virtue and not in the pageantry of wealth and riches…. Dissipate not the wealth of your precious lives in the pursuit of evil and corrupt affection, nor let your endeavours be spent in promoting your personal interest…. Guard against idleness and sloth, and cling unto that which profiteth mankind, whether young or old, whether high or low. And The real purpose of development… is laying foundations for a new social order that can cultivate the limitless potentialities latent in human consciousness.
So we aren’t talking about no growth, but a new kind of growth: growth in beauty, in science, in creativity. There are all kinds of possibilities for growth, if we define prosperity in different context.
Arthur then addressed the question of how to get to a new, sustainable world order from here, highlighting the role of ethics and values in this process:
Ethics is the social equivalent of DNA. In biology everything is coded in a cell’s DNA tells them how to each other. In society these types of interaction are determined by its values. The most important way to transform a society is through its values. … If an individual knows how to behave, and is self-directing, it’s a cheap and effective system.
We are trustees of this planet. Sustainability itself is an ethical concept, for it has to do with being moderate and humble. We must ‘be content with little and be freed form all inordinate desire”. Just as an individual doesn’t only eat and grow forever, so likewise a company.
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- Victoria Thoresen, project manager of the Consumer Citizenship Network
After lunch we had the second set of workshops (the first set was this morning), with titles such as “Developing Generative Change Leaders Across sectors: An exploration of Integral Approaches”, “Renewable energy and energy sustainability”, “Spreading values making the best possible use of the media: a powerful means to influence”. I went to one on “Sustainable Consumption” led by Victoria Thoresen, who introduced the workshop thus:
The purpose of the workshop is to look at sustainable consumption. … How do you help more people learn about their consumption patterns without making them feel guilty, wanting to put their heads in the sand. What we’ve created is a concept called consumer citizen education. Not just consumer education, but with citizenship.
She mentioned that we can consider our motivations to consume as symbolic (e.g. to achieve acceptance, show love), practical (to eat, move), and environmental (often a negative effect).
When we want to buy something we can sum these up to see a bigger picture. With a car, for example, we have a pretty heavy environmental impact or footprint or value. The symbolic value is the status it gives you, and the transportation is a practical value. So how do we decide whether it’s a good idea to consume it or not? We look at the factors to see if they balance out. Since values differ per person, each person must decide whether it makes sense or not. It is hard, therefore, for one person to decide what another should consume...
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On Sunday, after breakfast and a selection of holy writings and prayers embellished with live music, we had a brief and energetic presentation by AIESEC Chief communications officer, Lucy Symons on what her 32,000 strong student organization is doing to promote positive change and on prospects for continued collaboration with EBBF.
- Ernst Ligteringen, CEO of GRI
Subsequently we were introduced to the CEO of GRI, the Global Reporting Initiative, Ernst Ligteringen, whose organization has developed a 79-indicator sustainability reporting framework to encourage and help organizations “make sustainability reporting as visible and substantive as financial reporting.” The urgency of moving towards sustainability was made clear in the beginning:
In the 1980s we passed a big mark: we began to use more of world’s resources (soil, marine resources, timber, ores) than the planet could regenerate. If we continue at this pace, we will need 2 planets to supply our resource needs. Don’t need an accountant to see we have a problem here. We can hold the course for a certain time, but very soon we’ll have to deal with reality. The big question is how?
He pointed out that people—e.g. consumers and employees—want to know who produced the products they consume and how. “What’s in my food? Is it safe? Does it have GMOs? In China people want to know how their milk was produced… You may have leather in your sneakers, do you know where it comes from, how it was produced? Can we find substantive information on the sustainability impact?”
And it is not only consumers and environmental NGOs and government who are aware of this need, Mr. Ligteringen noted: “In December of 2006 heads of major consulting companies said that the current system of quarterly reporting is incomplete, that it needs to encompass ‘a wider range of performance measures’. So it seems to be quite a gap between the information we need and what is currently offered.”
He spoke about the kind of massive adaptive change that is required of us, and that “In order to do this we need information that is very differing from what is now available from companies. And this is what GRI is working on, trying to cause a revolution in what companies report.”
Specifically, he mentioned that these reports would have “More transparency on the impact on environmental and societal levels.” He concluded on an interesting point. That sustainability reporting isn’t only having an impact on consumers as they realize what effect the products they consume have on the environment and society. The effect goes two ways:
What many companies are finding when they take up the challenge, that the process helps them reevaluate what they are doing and how they are doing it. The reporting is becoming not only an afterthought, but helps them reconceptualize the entire company. It is turning out to be a very practical way of finding out how my company is positioned for the future, or how they company I work for is handling these questions.
Toyota provides an example of this: as it become conscious of the impact its operations have on the environment and society, it created a new product, the Prius (a hybrid, electric-gas), which met the demand on the market for people who were also conscious of these issues. Other companies would have loved to fill this demand, but didn’t see it coming.
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An inspiring conference it was, but don’t take my word for it. Here are the comments from a few of the participants:
"The quality of talks was excellent and I will take away a renewed sense of urgency around this issue and inspiration to take it on."
"EBBF was new to me, so I was really glad to meet its members and participants, as well as being exposed to some extent to the underlying philosophy of the Baha'i Faith. It was a stimulating and inspiring event."
Hopefully, inspired is only half of the result. Let us now see what each one of us now do in our respective fields of work, business or not, paid or unpaid, and how we can translate these ideals into reality. Otherwise, what’s the point?
