The benefits of trading places between Inco & WWF

Corporate-NGO "engagement" is getting like those TV shows, popular in the northern hemisphere, where bosses take to the shop floor or gay men join rugby squads. It's all meant to be enlightening as well as entertaining. But the decision to swap roles between WWF-Canada's Monte Hummel, and Inco's Scott Hand, smacks more of opportunism - on both sides. One wonders how the many community members and workers who suffer at the hands of Inco (in Indonesia, Guatemala, Canada and elsewhere) view this elitist exercise to "improve understanding", when their own demands and grievances continue to be ignored.

For her part, Beatrice Olivastri of Canadian Friends of the Earth turned down a similar invitation from a mining company, though she went on to be "CEO for a day" with a timber firm.

The benefits of trading places

By Alison Maitland, Financial Times

July 26, 2004

Monte Hummel, head of the WWF conservation group in Canada, recently swapped his environmentally friendly Toyota Prius to be chauffeur-driven round Toronto in a Cadillac. Scott Hand, the usual occupant of the luxury vehicle and chief executive of one of the world's largest mining companies, was meanwhile discovering the low-emission delights of Mr Hummel's hybrid petrol-electric car.

Their vehicular initiation was part of an unusual job exchange in which the corporate chief executive became the boss of the conservation campaign group for a day, and vice versa. Mr Hand, who heads Inco, the Canadian nickel producer, spent his day meeting senior WWF staff, chairing a discussion about no-go areas for mining, and learning about the financial challenges facing the pressure group. Mr Hummel moved into Mr Hand's 15th-floor office near Toronto's financial district, kept a close eye on the metal price and held an intense round of meetings about conservation with senior officials and board members.

Rapprochement between business and campaigners has been a marked trend of the past decade. Yet there are those on both sides who still see the other as "the enemy". Was a job swap a step too far?

Mr Hummel has no qualms. "I have a history among my colleagues for putting the other side's case to them," he says. "The better you understand the other side's view, the better chance you have of advancing your own."

Mr Hand is equally sanguine. "Some people were probably surprised," he says. "This obviously departs from the traditional roster of mining company CEO activities. But I think people inside the company and those who know us saw it as consistent with a number of things we've been doing in recent years."

The exchange was one of two organised by Corporate Knights, a Canadian magazine that focuses on corporate social responsibility. The other pair to trade places were a "tree-cutter" and a "tree-hugger": Frank Dottori, CEO of Tembec, the Canadian forestry company, and Beatrice Olivastri, head of Friends of the Earth in Canada (see below).

The WWF-Inco job swap is a measure of how much has changed at Inco since the 1970s, when environmentalists regarded the mining group as the epitome of evil because of its high emissions of sulphur dioxide, a big contributor to acid rain.

Inco redeemed itself in the late 1980s by dramatically reducing its emissions, says Mr Hummel. "Mining and refining of nickel is fundamentally a dirty business as far as Mother Nature is concerned. This is an interesting example of a company that has taken a dirty business and is trying to do it as best it can."

Inco puts serious effort into consulting indigenous people about sensitive developments and is funding programmes for endangered species. But the exchange also threw up bones of contention. The environmental lobby has called for at least half of Canada's vast tract of boreal forest - of pine, spruce, aspen, poplar and larch - to be protected from industrial development. It wants protected zones to be permanently fixed, but the mining industry says it must have flexibility.

"Any proposal to completely prevent development activities on 50 per cent of the boreal would be hard for the mining sector to swallow," says Mr Hand in a follow-up letter to Mr Hummel. "Only the good Lord really knows where mineral deposits exist and mining companies must be able to explore to find them."

Conservationists, on the other hand, argue that parkland cannot suddenly be converted to mining. "Therein is the rub that makes it a rather intractable issue for our two sectors," says Mr Hummel.

The veteran environmentalist nonetheless enjoyed his day as boss of Inco, although he was surprised how closely employees watch fluctuations in the price of nickel, the exchange rate and the company's shares. "I'd have a little longer-term view," he says. It was probably coincidence, but the nickel price dipped a little while he was there.

The two men have plenty in common, says Mr Hummel. "Our lifestyles in some ways are depressingly similar. We're both used to 14-hour days. We both get bleached under the fluorescent lights all day in downtown Toronto."

He was particularly struck by the commitment of the people he met with responsibility for environmental issues at Inco. "I was surprised at the strength of this feeling. I don't think the conservation community has a monopoly on righteousness."

If business people sometimes dismiss campaigners as enthusiastic amateurs, Mr Hand did not find any at WWF. "What impressed me most was the quality and dedication of the people I met," he says. "The briefings I heard from WWF staff were at the same level as what I'm used to hearing around the boardroom table from the top people in our industry."

He believes it makes sense to engage with organisations that are recognised as guardians of environmental and social values. But these organisations must be pragmatic, like WWF. "For some purist environmental NGOs, being a guardian simply means no mining at all - full stop - and frankly I have a hard time knowing how to get past that into a meaningful conversation."

Both men had advice for each other's organisations. But would they recommend the experience to their peers? "You bet I would," says Mr Hummel, who took part out of a sense of mischief but also to turn the spotlight on to some serious issues. "Nature would be better off if we had a few more of these exchanges. But they shouldn't become syrupy platitudes about us sharing objectives and values. We don't have the same objectives or the same values. There are fundamental differences. But that doesn't mean our paths don't cross."

Mr Hand agrees that CEOs should trade places with campaigners, provided this leads to something enduring. So far, busy diaries have got in the way of his planned follow-up lunch with Mr Hummel. But he says: "I think you should be prepared to look at this as part of a long-term relationship, the start of a more meaningful and deeper engagement, and not just a one-time diversion." What did he make of Mr Hummel's mode of transport? "I really enjoyed riding in Monte's Prius and thought it seemed like a very good car," he says. "But I'm probably somewhat biased, since the Prius happens to be powered by a battery that contains Inco nickel."

TRADITIONAL ENEMIES DECLARE CEASEFIRE

Wary of undermining her credibility as an environmentalist, Beatrice Olivastri turned down the offer of a day as head of a mining company. But she was so intrigued by the potential of forestry as a source of renewable energy that she agreed to become CEO of Tembec, a Canadian timber company.

"Because of the role-playing, which is the risky part of this, I wanted to have the exchange with a company and industry sector where I thought there was some art of the possible," says the CEO of Friends of the Earth Canada.

Ms Olivastri was thrown in at the deep end. Frank Dottori, head of Tembec, arranged for her to take his place at the company's annual strategy meeting, attended by senior managers from France, the US and Canada. Each division reported on its environmental performance over the past year and set out its capital expenditure and strategy for the coming year.

There was nervousness on both sides. She was conscious that her remarks while acting as head of Tembec might be used out of context against her in the future. Some managers were concerned about presenting critical business information to the leader of a lobby group that has challenged the company's performance.

"It was very open," she says. "There was no agreement about confidentiality. Some honour is assumed, and hopefully earned."

Under Mr Dottori's leadership, the company has worked hard to gain its green credentials. It is committed to having all its operations certified as sustainable by the Forest Stewardship Council by the end of next year. Managers' bonuses are directly linked to meeting environmental objectives.

During his day running FOE in Ottawa two weeks earlier, Mr Dottori had caused surprise by proposing a carbon tax to raise funds for alternatives to fossil fuel. "I believe they thought I was a little more radical than they were, because they thought a tax wouldn't be particularly popular," he says. "That's true, but I thought the issue [of global warming] warrants some fairly radical action."

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