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Five years on
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In our regular critical review, Hannah Bullock revisits stories we identified as interesting back in 2000 – and checks where they’re going now.
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Stunts in the boardroom
“We thought we were on the back of some sort of wave,” says Friends of
the Earth campaigner Simon McRae. Back in 2000, ‘shareholder activism’
was seen as the
way to get companies to clean up their act. Greenpeace bought itself
shares to gain a voice at the AGMs of Shell and BP, where it pushed
challenging resolutions on to the agenda [see ‘Greenpeace buys Shell (shock)’, GF22] and Friends of the Earth even published an online ‘how to’ handbook.
It’s great for “sending shockwaves through the boardroom”, says McRae.
He reckons the decision by Balfour Beatty to pull out of the
controversial Ilisu dam project in Turkey is, in part, thanks to the
resolution filed by the charity in 2003. But “it’s not easy for NGOs to
keep buying clumps of shares” in order to have a voice. They also find
it frustrating that investors here seem much more reluctant than in the
US to vote openly against the board. “Abstaining,” says McRae, “is
about as far as they’ll go in the City.” Instead, “a lot goes on behind
closed doors”. Which is where the charity is taking its tactics. Its
latest scheme involves bringing the victims of overseas corporate
activities to face-to-face meetings with investors and members of the
board in advance of the AGM.
Putting pressure on those who already have their fingers in the
corporate pie is certainly a quicker win, agrees John Jackson of the
Burma Campaign. But, unimpressed by the cautious “risk analysis” of
mainstream socially responsible investment, he says his job is “to try
and create that risk”. As well as giving investors information to use
as ammunition to force changes in company policy, they warn them that
they’ll “destroy the brand anyway” through offensives like the current
Totalitarian Oil campaign.
Stunts in the boardroom aren’t dead in the water yet, though. Just this
April, the doughty duo known as the Yes Men found their way in to
address the annual meeting of Dow, which is under pressure to take more
responsibility for the Bhopal disaster in India. Amid suggestions for
such measures as cleaning up the site, they also launched a new
corporate responsibility-type tool which they called the Acceptable
Risk Calculator. A few bankers actually signed up for licences to this
spoof programme, which purported to help businesses “determine the
exact point where human casualties will start to cut into profit” and
to suggest “the best regions on earth to locate ventures with
potentially very high death tolls”.
Friends of the Earth, 020 7566 1670,
www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/corporates
The Burma Campaign, 020 7324 4710,
www.burmacampaign.org.uk
The Yes Men’s ‘Dow’ website, www.DowEthics.com
Slow zones gather speed
It was good news when the government urged local authorities to designate more 20mph areas in their own communities [see ‘Safety, speed and the school run’, GF22]. But who’s taken up the suggestion?
Hull City Council has really run with the idea, turning 25% of the
city’s streets over to 20mph limits. There are now 120 slow zones in
the city, sited around casualty hotspots – and 55% fewer accidents
there. But if it started out as a simple exercise to address road
safety, it has actually had a wider impact – “creating a different kind
of space” for the people living there, in the words of city council
official Mark Jessop. There are reports – and the odd complaint – that
more kids are now playing in the streets, and in a residents’
questionnaire three years on, a quarter said they walk and cycle more
thanks to the speed limit. “The cars passing six inches from your elbow
are now only going a little faster than you are,” says Jessop, a
cyclist himself.
But this sort of success story doesn’t simply come about by putting up
signs and laying down sleeping policemen. At Hampshire County Council,
Graham Carter reminds us that “it’s a hearts and minds exercise, too”.
As well as getting residents involved in choosing the zones, it’s
essential to engage them in activities like School Travel Plans, which
get parents – and “the drivers of tomorrow” – thinking about the root
of the problem: their own travel choices.
Mark Jessop, Hull County Council,
01482 612103
Graham Carter, Hampshire County Council,
01962 857810
Gym’ll fix it
A few years ago, aware that leotards and leisure centres aren’t
everyone’s idea of fun, conservation charity BTCV came up with the idea
of ‘keep fit’ sessions in the great outdoors. A series of countryside
walks led by a GP [see ‘Greening the streets of Stress City’,
GF22] brought clear health benefits to his patients, so the charity
rolled out a whole programme of ‘Green Gyms’ across the UK.
There are now over 60 up and running (including 12 in Northern Ireland
alone, and 35 in England) offering people the chance to get their hands
dirty and their heart rate up, through activities like hedge planting,
community gardening and footpath construction. The weekly conservation
sessions have helped individuals suffering from depression get back on
their feet, as well as bringing a taste of that much-coveted
“waist-to-hip ratio decrease” to those wanting to shift the pounds.
BTCV hopes to double the number of Green Gyms in England by next year.
The charity is working with a variety of potential partners – such as
the Hindu temple that’s collaborating on one project in the West
Midlands – and also has plans to export the trademark down to Australia
and across to Europe.
BTCV Green Gym, 01302 522200,
www.btcv.org/greengym
Farming for flowers
When Green Futures
last reported from a field in Blakehill, the land was quietly awaiting
metamorphosis from an airstrip into a wild flower meadow. When we
called this time, Paul Hill from the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust was busy
castrating calves on the farm that’s been specially set up for the
transformation.
The cattle are as important as the hay cutting machinery the Trust has
invested in, explains Hill. Thanks to their weeding out of the coarser
grasses, flowers like the oxeye daisy, marsh orchid and vetch have at
last got a foothold at the site. The Trust is now introducing species
like scabious and knapweed, a job the cows also help with by shaking
out seeds from their wildflower-rich hay.
Although the meadow hasn’t yet reached maturity, the 235-hectare
reserve is to be opened to the public later this year. Landowners are
also invited to visit what should soon be a LEAF (Linking Environment
and Farming) demonstration farm. Now that agricultural subsidies are
conditional on farmers looking after the environment, says Hill,
Blakehill’s an ideal place for them to find inspiration on how
livestock can work for biodiversity.
Paul Hill, Wiltshire Wildlife Trust,
01380 725670
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