Natural partners

Aleksander Nowacki examines how NGOs and businesses are working together to ddress

environmental concerns

The problems of nature protection and the environment in general are far too important to be entrusted to politicians and environment ministry officials - this seems to be the conclusion reached by those professionally engaged in the matter.

"The level of environmental awareness is very low in this country compared to current European Union member states," said Stefan Kozłowski, a leading scholar on nature protection. "What do the authorities do? Reduce the number of nature-related classes in schools."

Like other environmental activists, Kozłowski is dismayed, claiming that the low level of education and the resulting lack of understanding of ecological problems in society is the most important threat to the country's natural environment.

He is also concerned that no serious attempts have been made to coordinate the efforts of various institutions engaged in campaigning for increased environmental awareness. He believes it may lead to the misallocation of resources with projects doubling each other's functions and funds being used inefficiently.

"Even if this is not the case," Kozłowski said, "there is simply no way to find out. There are a lot of valuable initiatives springing up across the country, and nobody is actually coordinating their activities."

As the chairman of the scientific council of the Green Lungs of Poland initiative, comprising municipalities in the northeastern part of the country where the most valuable natural resources are concentrated, Kozłowski is clearly in a position to express his doubts.

Though others share Kozłowski's sentiments about the lack of coordination among the country's various environmental organizations, some aren't so cynical. They argue that environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are, in fact, doing more to join forces not only with their peers, but with businesses to promote environmental awareness.

"I can see how such an impression could arise," said Sławek Brzózek of the Our Earth Foundation, which organizes the annual Clean Up Poland campaign. "But it is an overly pessimistic view. The organizations involved in nature protection are in constant contact with each other."

Brzózek agreed, however, that it would be futile to count on government officials to have an overall view of the problems involved. He said that a good opportunity to create structures of coordination was missed at the time of municipal government reform in 1999. No thought was given to developing legal structures that would allow local government authorities to take on that job.

Moreover, Brzózek was careful to emphasize the dangers inherent in the authorities' thinking on the promotion of environmental awareness.

"It is only too easy to slip from thinking of coordination to (thinking of) centralization," he said. "The whole point is that people's initiative should be encouraged. Centralized control is the opposite of what we need."

But Brzózek is confident that NGOs are quite capable of developing appropriate mechanisms on their own. He believes that even if there is still some amount of improvisation involved, NGOs are becoming increasingly professional in their outlooks and modes of operation and will come to coordinate their work within the foreseeable future.

Significant progress

It is not only some representatives of the environmental NGOs who stress that progress has been made over the last decade. The nature of this development is best seen in their changed attitude toward business. While in the mid-1990s there were many environmental NGOs that saw business as an enemy, there have been many examples of successful cooperation since then.

This is largely the result of both business and the third sector, composed of NGOs, benefiting from exposure to the cultures of more developed economies. Environmentalists agree that in the 1990s, it used to be much easier to talk to local operations of foreign companies than to domestic businesses, while some businesspeople grudgingly recall the mistrust of the business world shown by most NGOs just six or seven years ago. Global organizations entering the local scene showed the way to successful cooperation with businesses.

Problems do occasionally arise, and one example of this is the case of a leading soft drink producer that offered significant donations to several environmental NGOs and found its offer rejected. The crux of the problem was that the donations were intended as a cover-up for the company's failure to address the problem of recycling. It is only now that the first plant for recycling of multilayer juice containers is being built in the country, while at the time the offer was made, plans for such a facility did not exist. In that case, environmental NGOs refused to act as a fig leaf for harmful operations.

"There are always going to be problems when the sides involved do not use the same language, so to speak," said Adam Pool, president of the Polish operations of Environmental Investment Partners (EIP), a venture capital fund specializing in environmental investment. He agreed, however, that both sides have made progress in recent years. He sees NGOs as having developed a sense of the mutual benefits that working together with businesses can bring.

But Pool also insists that the adoption of the highest standards of business practices has played an important role. The United Nations "triple bottom line" principle in reporting has been increasingly used in the country. This principle states that a company should report on its finances, the state of the environment in which it operates and the social implications of its activities. While many companies used to concentrate only on the financial side, there is now a widespread understanding of the benefits that stem from taking a broader view of the responsibilities that a business has. The triple bottom line is a way to avoid misunderstandings. A positive business image can only be created and maintained when companies keep the bigger picture in view.

There are also more specific benefits that an appreciation of the role of NGOs may bring, Pool said. Businesses are often unable to get certain points across, as is most clearly the case in the field of environmental law enforcement. While companies may find their appeals for decisive action against those guilty of breaching the law brushed aside, such problems are often more easily dealt with when NGOs get involved.

Another key point is that NGOs tend to be sensitive to the problems of energy efficiency. While authorities are frequently happy to start their nature protection efforts from scratch, in many cases it is more beneficial to modernize existing facilities. That is why Prochem, a company specializing in modernizing municipal heating systems, has found it beneficial to establish relationships with NGOs that are adept at urging the local authorities to improve the existing installations rather than building new ones.

Sławomir Wrzask, head of fundraising at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Poland, is enthusiastic about the role that business can play - and is increasingly playing - in addressing the problems of the environment.

"If you look at the list of the top 100 largest economic entities in the world, 51 of them are companies, not states," he said. "That alone shows the potential that business has. We cannot afford to waste that potential in the field of environment."

Wrzask also pointed out the limitations that government authorities encounter, both financial and structural. As the efficiency of administrative structures may be a problem, NGOs have a crucial role to play in stimulating activity, identifying problems and pinpointing entities that may be interested in solving them. This is where business comes in and often makes it possible to assist the authorities in their nature protection efforts.

One such example is the case of the global "Emission 55" initiative involving more than 180 companies, 11 of them in this country, that encouraged their respective governments to promptly ratify the Kyoto Protocol, which set down rules and schedules for the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. The campaign's success in convincing the government to ratify the agreement last year was a triumph for the country's environmentalists. In connection with that campaign, the problem of the inefficient usage of energy and renewable energy was also addressed, and the corporate sector responded positively to the WWF's initiative. The efforts met with success domestically, and the treaty was ratified last year. The support that the local business community showed for the initiative was an important argument in favor of ratification and demonstrated that the principles of corporate responsibility are increasingly becoming the standard in this country.

Successful partnerships

Our Earth Foundation's Brzózek also cites examples of other successful partnerships. In 2001, his organization conducted a public campaign to promote national parks in the country. It received positive feedback from Bieszczady National Park along with three others that all reported an increase in ecotourism in their regions. Young people, for example, confirmed that pro-environmental spots on MTV roused their interest. Furthermore, mobile operator PTK Centertel, operator of the Idea mobile network, funded a campaign called "Idea for the Earth," which was promoted on television, billboards, CDs and postcards across the land.

"Our objective of attracting people's attention to the wealth that our national parks represent was achieved," Brzózek enthuses. "The unwarranted associations of national parks with museums and a lack of vitality were at least partly dispelled, while our sponsor raised brand awareness and created positive associations."

It was a typical public relations operation, whose success was largely due to an effective slogan made possible by the corporate partner's name; but it shows that the business community in this country has come to appreciate the long-term benefits to be had from cooperating with NGOs.

Brzózek described the project as an example of the "greening of business." There are many other instances of this phenomenon. While WWF Poland conducts meetings where lectures and discussions are the core of its activities, the Our Earth Foundation has developed a more extended form of raising the environmental awareness of corporate employees. It has formed a long-term partnership with Perfetti Van Melle, producer of Fruitella and other recognizable brands of chewing gum and candy, which involves organizing "green days" for employees and their families. A green day entails planting trees and flowers, followed by a picnic with games focused on themes related to the environment and nature protection. Although participation is not compulsory, this combination of a classic office retreat concept with environmental education has regularly attracted some 70% of the company's employees.

"Who creates the mental image of the environment that the society has?" Wrzask asked rhetorically. "Business obviously plays an important role in this and that is why such schemes are important."

Less cooperation in hard times

NGO representatives point out, however, that the present economic situation has made it increasingly difficult to find sponsors for their events.

"A few years back finding sponsors for our events was relatively easy," said Iwona Okupska, head of fundraising at the Mazowsze Regional Center for Environmental Education. "But it has become very difficult to ask companies for money. They simply don't have it."

While other NGOs confirm this view, they are eager to dispel the preconceptions found in the ways of thinking that persist in some companies.

"We often find that environmental NGOs are associated in people's minds with endless requests for money," Brzózek said. "That is occasionally the response of the public relations departments we approach." For that reason NGOs are eager to stress that their partnerships with companies take many forms and need not mean significant expenditure on the part of businesses. It is also why NGOs insist on the importance of long-term partnerships with specific companies.

This way of thinking led to the January 2001 launch of the WWF Corporate Club, a platform for permanent partnership now involving 18 companies that have decided to support the fund's nature preservation activities. Funding is just one form of support, another form being evidenced in the "Emission 55" initiative, when the club was the platform for business involvement in the campaign.

Wrzask of WWF Poland is keen to emphasize that club members are market leaders in their respective segments.

"It is those companies that are most visible in the public domain and are therefore more interested in promoting the image of socially responsible business," Wrzask said.

But it is not only the largest corporations that get involved in promoting environmental awareness. At the other end of the spectrum are activities for local schoolchildren and cultural centers in small towns and villages. NGOs stress their importance, as no amount of legal changes and investment outlays can resolve the problem of nature degradation if undesirable patterns of behavior persist in society.

"Children (account for) a large part of family budgets," said Agnieszka Lepianka, an expert at the Environmental Education Center Foundation. "If we can get them to buy environmentally-friendly products, it will be a great success."

She went on to say that many parents' lifestyle choices are influenced by their children, explaining that organizing garbage collection at a school is a good way to introduce the inhabitants of a community to recycling and waste management issues. Lepianka also said that parents are often asked to get involved, by providing the resources necessary for a given activity, such as transportation or materials. There is a role for small business to play in this field. Owners of local family businesses are often happy to help and at the same time they are themselves made aware of the problems involved.

Janusz Dawidziuk, president of the State Forests holding, which manages 80% of the country's woodland, agrees that such activities are in some ways more important than capital-intensive projects on a grand scale.

"The biggest problem in terms of nature protection is the behavior of those who use forests with more or less regularity, which is practically the whole of society," Dawidziuk said.

The attitudes of ordinary people can make a big difference, as demonstrated by the example of the Świętokrzyskie region in the southeast. In that part of the country there is a tradition of stealing wood for fuel and other uses. The practice is a threat to the very survival of some valuable forest patches, while poaching, irresponsible lighting of fires and using forestland as illegal garbage dumps compounds the devastation.

"Attitudes cannot be changed overnight," Dawidziuk said. "We are in for years of educational work at the grassroots level. But there is only so much that governmental institutions can do."

Examples of the grassroots-level work mentioned by Dawidziuk abound. NGOs, such as the aforementioned Environmental Education Centers, organize training courses for schoolteachers to help them keep children interested in environment-related topics, but some schemes reach a certain level of complexity and involve numerous entities.

This year's "Friendship with Nature" competition, organized by the Rakowiec Culture Center, involved 70 different vocal groups and soloists from schools across the land. Their songs were required to relate to issues of nature protection and environment. This effective method of promoting environmental awareness involved schools, parents and, obviously, businesses acting as sponsors.

Ulterior motives?

The picture of relations between businesses and NGOs is not all rosy, and last year saw a well-publicized scandal when certain organizations were found to be extorting money from developers in exchange for halting protests and withdrawing their objections to construction plans. NGOs are eager to play down the scale of this matter, saying that the press reports of "eco-extortion" schemes on a national scale were exaggerated.

However, the rumors were extremely damaging since they called into question the very motive for the existence of environmental NGOs. As EIP's Pool said, one of the NGOs' key advantages is that they help ensure transparency in the field of environmental protection and make sure that all entities are treated equally. When it was found that some were responsible for failing to follow their own rules, it damaged the reputations of all those involved in the third sector. Though the tumult has subsided and the atmosphere has improved considerably, the memory of those events continues to plague environmental NGOs to this day.

The scandal has further contributed to consolidation among environmentalist circles and a redoubling of efforts to follow a clear set of criteria in dealing with businesses - which does not mean that everyone is convinced.

Wrzask says that while most people are aware of WWF Poland's credentials, they associate environmental NGOs in general with endless protests. He said that business partners occasionally ask him in jest if he is a "tree-hugger."

Conversely, prejudice against business persists on the part of some in the third sector.

"Cooperation with companies from certain sectors is seen as a kind of betrayal by certain people," Wrzask said. "But there are many types of environmental organizations and this is by no means the dominant attitude anymore."

He went on to say that the culture of dialogue is now widespread, and it is more sensible to work with those companies that have a "dirty" image, so long as there is a will for improvement on their part. Dutch oil giant Shell, which for years was seen as the prime villain of all environmentalists, for that very reason decided to pursue partnerships with NGOs and has significantly improved its environmental performance. There are no spectacular success stories of this sort locally as of yet, but environmentalists are convinced that it is only a matter of time.

"What is the point of protesting when you can do things?" Wrzask asked. "We can treat each other as partners and solve problems together. No one else will do it for us."