The application of business principles to the world of civil society and social change has fashion, wealth, power and celebrity behind it. But where is the evidence that “philanthrocapitalism” works, and are there better ways to achieve urgently needed global social progress? It’s time to end the hype and start the debate, says Michael Edwards

Michael Edwards is director of the Governance & Civil Society Unit at the Ford Foundation.

Full essay on Open Democracy: http://www.opendemocracy.net/author/Michael_Edwards.jsp

The continued boom in bank products compliant with Islam has spurred plans to set up a new financial institution in Switzerland based on the tenets of the faith.

National Bank of Kuwait, one of the Middle East’s largest banks, is planning an Islamic private bank in Switzerland in partnership with a Saudi Arabian institution. The move comes as Islamic banking continues to see strong growth, in defiance of the credit crunch. Industry assets have grown by about 20 per cent to $500bn (€316bn) since last summer, according to Moody’s, the ratings agency.

Full story from the FT; By Andrew England in Kuwait and David Oakley in London

Last updated: March 30 2008 22:09

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9bbfce9e-fe8c-11dc-9e04-000077b07658.html

Tibetan organizations protesting the Chinese crackdown in the Himalayas are turning up the pressure against corporate sponsors of the Beijing Olympics. A prime target is Coca-Cola (KO), co-sponsor of the Beijing Olympic torch relay. The most ambitious in the history of the modern games, the 2008 relay began on Mar. 24 in Olympia, Greece, and will go to 21 countries and involve more than 21,000 torchbearers by the time it reaches Beijing for the Summer Games’ opening ceremony on Aug. 8. Coke, along with Chinese computer company Lenovo and South Korean electronics giant Samsung, has spent millions of dollars (the companies won’t disclose the exact amounts) to sponsor the relay. Lenovo designed the torch and provided free laptops to Olympic officials. Samsung plans to pass out Samsung flags in all 134 cities along the route. Coke nominated 100 environmental activists to serve as torchbearers.

Full Business Week cover story here: http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/mar2008/gb20080327_454941.htm?link_position=link1

The nonprofit Conservation International can claim to have redefined how conservation organizations work with major corporations, enlisted them as equal partners, and worked with them to implement environmentally friendly and sustainable practices.

Starting in 1987 they conducted first Debt-for-Nature Swap.  The first-ever debt swap with the government of Bolivia, which agrees to put $600,000 toward conservation in exchange for debt relief.

By 1998 they were ‘Creating New Enterprise Approaches’ and joined with Starbucks to show that a simple cup of coffee can be a powerful conservation tool, helping farmers in some ecologically rich areas grow environmentally sensitive crops. To date, Starbucks has purchased more than 8 million pounds of Conservation CoffeeTM from these farmers.

But it was not until 2000 that they focused their energies on Engaging the Private Sector by establishing the Center for Environmental Leadership in thanks to a $25-million, five-year grant from Ford Motor Company. The center has its own site at: http://www.celb.org/xp/CELB/

Going to scale; in 2001 a $261-million gift from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation ramped up the scale and impact of CI’s work. The largest grant of its kind in the history of conservation funds CI’s Global Conservation Fund and the Tropical Ecology, Assessment, and Monitoring Network, and supports four major Centers for Biodiversity Conservation in the Tropical Andes, Brazil/Guianas, Melanesia, and Madagascar

Starbucks has just invested $7.5 million to extend in their decade long partnership with Conservation International that will take conservation beyond coffee farms and into surrounding landscapes to address the most pressing environmental issue of our day —- climate change. The 5 year project, will begin in Mexico and Indonesia, where Starbucks and CI will leverage their global scale to pilot landscape scale projects across all coffee growing regions — Asia, Africa, and Latin America — that create climate solutions through the protection of standing forests and restoration of degraded landscapes.

Their strategy will focus on reinforcing and expanding the potential of Starbucks ethical coffee buying guidelines, Coffee and Farmer Equity (C.A.F.E.) Practices to support farmer activities that keep carbon on the ground, protect important habitat for the world’s plant and animal species, and help farmlands become more resilient against what are predicted to be the devastating effects of climate change. Project activities may ultimately create an opportunity for farmers to diversify their incomes through access to emerging international carbon markets. Learn more about this new phase of the partnership.

The Center for Environmental Leadership in Business (CELB) http://www.celb.org/xp/CELB/  is also engaged with Wal-Mart, an important supporter of CI, to minimize the “environmental footprint” of their stores, warehouses, and distribution network.

The full list of COUNCIL MEMBERS
• Bank of America
• Cargill
• Coca-Cola
• DuPont
• Ford Motor Company
• Gap Inc.
• General Mills, Inc
• General Growth Properties, Inc
• Hyatt
• Kraft Foods Inc.
• Limited Brands
• McDonald’s
• Office Depot
• Royal Caribbean
• SC Johnson
• Shell Group
• Starbucks Coffee Company
• United Airlines
• United Technologies
• Wal-Mart
• The Walt Disney Company
• Weyerhaeuser Company
• WhiteWave Foods

COUNCIL FACTSHEET
• Business and Biodiversity Council Factsheet (pdf, 674 kb)

High net worth and retail investors overtake institutions in allocations to SRI themed funds.

A surge in the levels of private banking and retail investment has boosted sustainable investment strategies in Switzerland by 67% in one year, according to a survey of 19 fund managers by OnValues, the Swiss sustainable research company.
Full story by Hugh Wheelan http://www.responsible-investor.com/home/article/swiss/

Also see survey coverage at: http://www.onvalues.ch/

From Marc Gunther’s blog: http://greenbiz.com/Blogs/marcgunther.cfm

Today, Starbucks ventured into the world of ecosystem services with its longtime partner, Conservation International. For years, Starbucks and CI have worked together to develop what are called CAFÉ standards for Starbucks’ growers, which reward those coffee farmers (with higher prices) who adhere to best environmental and social practices. Now Starbucks and CI want to help protect the land surrounding places where coffee is grown. (Here’s the press release-you need to read to the bottom to get to the part about CI.) The new project is intended to help the farmers get a piece of the lucrative and fast-growing $70 billion carbon finance industry.

David Brooks’s Op-Ed page in The New York Times, March 21, 2008

Earlier generations of benefactors thought that social service should be like sainthood or socialism. But this one thinks it should be like venture capital.

Importantly; his piece features:  www.americaforward.org : 

America Forward, a consortium of these entrepreneurs, wants government to do domestic policy in a new way. It wants Washington to expand national service (to produce more social entrepreneurs) and to create a network of semipublic social investment funds. These funds would be administered locally to invest in community-run programs that produce proven results. The government would not operate these social welfare programs, but it would, in essence, create a network of semipublic Gates Foundations that would pick winners based on stiff competition.

New research from the Association of British Insurers (ABI) shows that companies with the best corporate governance records have produced returns 18 percent higher than those with poor governance. The research also reveals that a breach of governance best practice reduces a company’s industry-adjusted return on assets by an average of 1 percentage point a year.
www.abi.org.uk

Fund says it will also start disclosing complete shareholder voting decisions on-line.

The €250bn ($366bn) Norwegian Government Pension Fund, has opened its books to show how it engages and measures results with multinationals on issues such as child labour, climate change, executive pay and governance. It stopped short, however, of naming the corporations that it has lobbied – which it had planned to do – saying companies felt public dialogue would be “different and less credible” than confidential talks. Starting this year, Norges Bank, which manages the pension fund money, said it would also disclose all its voting activity during the previous year on the internet at the same time as its annual report.

Full story by Hugh Wheelan | March 19th, 2008, Here: http://www.responsible-investor.com/home/article/norway/

What Microloans Miss

James Surowiecki in The New Yorker March 17, 2008

Making loans and fighting poverty are normally two of the least glamorous pursuits around, but put the two together and you have an economic innovation that has become not just popular but downright chic. The innovation—microfinance—involves making small loans to poor entrepreneurs, usually in developing countries. It has been around since the nineteen-seventies, but in the past few years it has seized the imaginations of economists, activists, and bankers alike. The U.N. declared 2005 the International Year of Microcredit, and the microfinance pioneer Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, while celebrities like Natalie Portman and companies like Benetton have become fervent microloan advocates. Even ordinary Americans can now get in on the act, at sites like Kiva.org, where you can make a microloan yourself. (Right now, a clothing vender in Cambodia needs seven hundred dollars to “purchase more clothes to sell.”)

This vogue has translated into a flood of real dollars: institutional and individual investments in microfinance more than doubled between 2004 and 2006, to $4.4 billion, and the total volume of loans made has risen to $25 billion, according to Deutsche Bank. Unfortunately, it has also translated into a flood of hype. There’s no doubt that microfinance does a tremendous amount of good, yet there are also real limits to what it can accomplish. Microloans make poor borrowers better off. But, on their own, they often don’t do much to make poor countries richer.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2008/03/17/080317ta_talk_surowiecki