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By Bryan McGannon

If you needed a reason to take chemical reform seriously, you got it in the form of the Elk River chemical spill in West Virginia in January. Besides the human cost, which left many communities without running water for days and made residents sick from the chemicals, there were massive business and economic impacts. According to the Center for Business and Economic Research at Marshall University, businesses in the Charleston, W.Va. area lost about $61 million (PDF) in just the first week after the spill.

Or perhaps we can look to North Carolina and the massive spill that dumped nearly 40,000 tons of coal ash into the Dan River on Feb. 2, coating 70 miles of the river with toxic contaminants such as arsenic, mercury and lead.

These accidents shine a spotlight on the potential for damage from poorly regulated toxic chemicals. But, in fact, they only hint at how poor current regulations really are for these chemicals.

Of the 80,000 chemicals currently being produced, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been able to test only 200 — 0.25 percent of the chemicals on the market.

The Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) was intended to give the EPA the power to identify and regulate toxic chemicals when it was passed in 1976. The law grandfathered 62,000 chemicals already on the market in 1976, exempting them from regulation. And a 1980s court case rendered the law ineffectual by forcing the EPA into analytical loops to meet the unworkable cost/benefit standard in the law. Unfortunately, the law has not been updated since.

The good news is that there is now broad agreement, even among members of the chemical industry, the government and health and environmental advocates, that TSCA needs to be reformed. The bad news is that there is strong disagreement over how to do so. Two bills have been introduced, the Chemical Safety Improvement Act in the Senate and the Chemicals in Commerce Act in the House of Representatives. Both are unnecessarily complicated and riddled with provisions that would stall or delay effective regulation. The bottom line is that they would not be good for the majority of businesses in this country.

In December of last year, a number of companies, and the American Sustainable Business Council and other business organizations, formed the Companies for Safer Chemicals coalition. The company members include Patagonia, Seventh Generation, Method and Eileen Fisher, and business organizations from the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce, Sustainable Furnishings Council and Social Venture Network. The coalition represents great diversity, but it is united in the belief that meaningful, comprehensive reform can drive innovation for cleaner and safer products, protect the consumers and communities, and meet growing consumer demand that will in turn foster economic and job growth.

Specifically, these businesses support three main principles as part of any TSCA reform:

• Transparency. The public and businesses should have access to information regarding the safety of the chemicals in the products they use.


• Safety. Federal law should set a minimum acceptable safety requirement, but allow and encourage states to create innovative laws and regulations that further protect human health and the environment.


• Innovation. Chemical management should foster solutions that lead to safer and more sustainable products and technologies not codify the status quo.

It’s clear that the business perspective on TSCA reform is not monolithic. Incumbent industries call for legislation that would end up exempting some chemicals from effective regulation. But a growing number of companies are making the business case for strong, meaningful reform that will lead to safer chemicals and products.

Requiring all chemicals be treated equally will give all manufacturers a level playing field. And as we have seen recently in West Virginia and North Carolina, not taking these steps can have severe adverse effects — not just for communities, but for the businesses and ultimately the state and national economy.

Unfortunately, some members of Congress have proposed changes that would ultimately fail to address these principles. In the case of the House discussion draft introduced by Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL), the legislation calls for the EPA to consider the cost impacts of regulating a substance rather than the hazard caused by the substance. In fact, the cost basis is at the core of the court case that rendered existing law ineffective. This draft is proposing to fix a broken law with the same provision that broke the original law.

Guided by good science, legislation can drive business innovation and success — and protect public health at the same time. That is the kind of TSCA reform we want to see, and the kind we will keep pushing for. If we do not, incidents like the Elk River and Dan River spills will continue, and businesses and communities will continue pay the price.

Image credit: Flickr/The National Guard

Bryan McGannon is Deputy Policy Director for the American Sustainable Business Council. Policy Points is produced by the American Sustainable Business Council. The editor is Richard Eidlin, Director – Public Policy and Business Engagement.

Proving that being green really can get you more of that other green stuff, Unilever CEO and leader in corporate sustainability Paul Polman received a £431,775 ($722,230) bump to his already hefty annual bonus in large part for his work on the company’s sustainability goals.

As Bloomberg reported earlier this week, in Unilever’s Annual Report the Board of Directors mentioned Polman’s “leadership, including progress against the delivery of [Unilever Sustainable Living Plan] goals and his overall contribution to making sustainable living commonplace,” as a factor in choosing a 137.5 percent “personal performance multiplier” on his year-end bonus.

In comparison, Unilever’s CFO, Jean-Marc Huet, received a 110 percent personal performance multiplier.

Among his fellow multi-national CEOs, Polman has been one of the most vocal proponents for integrating environmental and social goals into overall business planning. The Unilever Sustainable Living Plan was formed under his watch and aims to halve the company’s environmental footprint by 2020, among other metrics. He has also broken away from the pack in his approach to shareholder duty. Rather than focus exclusively on shareholder returns, he has actively sought out the kind of investors that agree with his “build a bigger pie” approach to business, which emphasizes the long-term value companies can reap from a more environmentally and economically stable world.

Sure, preaching the gospel of sustainability wasn’t the only thing that earned Polman a bigger bonus slice this year. He is also just a good CEO on conventional terms. Underlying sales growth for Unilever in 2013 was 4.3 percent, a solid showing in a tumultuous year, and core operating margin was up 0.4% percent higher than expected, to reach 14.1 percent. Net profits were up 10 percent compared to the previous year.

Polman was certainly rewarded for his strong performance. His total remuneration for 2013 was just shy of €8 million ($11 million) — including bonuses (which accounted for about a quarter of the total) and share awards — far above average his continental counterparts.

According to 2012 data from the AFL-CIO, the average pay for a CEO in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands (Unilever is an Anglo-Dutch company) was $3.8 and $3.6 million, respectively. This means average CEO pay was 84 and 76 times the average worker’s salary in those respective countries.

That ratio still pales in comparison to the U.S., where the average CEO earned $12.3 million, or 354 times the average American worker in 2012.

Currently, Unilever’s sustainability plan does not include any metrics or goals around income inequality.

Image credit: Flickr/Minister-president

SC Johnson says it is expanding its dengue and malaria prevention initiatives in India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil, the Philippines, Mexico, Costa Rica and Vietnam.

The household products and pest control company implemented a global campaign called “Fight Dengue for Your Family” last year that serves as a call-to-action, motivating families to take precautionary measures on disease prevention and to make a difference in the lives of children.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the incidence of dengue has increased 30-fold in the past 50 years.

In Indonesia, this year, the company is working with the Indonesian Association of Public Health Experts to train “children larvae busters” who can serve as agents of change in their communities and educate fellow students and their families about dengue prevention. The program aims to reach 200 children across 50 schools.

In Brazil SC Johnson will launch “Fight Dengue for Your Family” for the first time in Ribeirão Preto, Brazil’s flagship region for dengue prevention. In partnership with the government, three private schools and a local NGO called Saúde Solidária, the company is participating in educational rallies and school programs. 

“As a global citizen and expert in pest control products, we have a responsibility to play a key role in increasing awareness of these diseases in communities around the world and providing access to quality education resources,” said Kelly M. Semrau, senior vp – global corporate affairs, communication & sustainability for SC Johnson.

 

 

American candy giant Mars is to develop a fully traceable pipeline back to known palm oil processing mills by year-end 2014.

The policy is at the forefront of the business' strengthened commitment to tackle deforestation, and further supported by the launch of its new deforestation policy. In addition to palm oil, Mars will also focus on other raw materials that have the greatest impact on forests: beef, pulp and paper, and soy.

"Rapid expansion of palm oil plantations continues to threaten environmentally sensitive areas of tropical rainforest and carbon-rich peatlands, as well as the rights of communities that depend on them for their livelihoods. We have recognized that even though we have already implemented a 100% certified supply of Palm Oil this is not enough," said Barry Parkin, chief sustainability officer.

As part of the policy, Mars has introduced a new sourcing charter that will require all its suppliers to have a fully sustainable and traceable palm oil supply across all their operations by the end of 2015 (or to have plans in place by the end of 2015 for doing so) and to have confirmed their commitment to the principles in its sourcing charter by the end of this year.

In addition, Mars has become a member of The Forest Trust (TFT), a global non-profit organization focused on the delivery of responsible products. All TFT's palm oil members are companies that are committed to traceable, No Deforestation palm oil. TFT field teams will work with Mars suppliers in mills and plantations to help them build traceability and verify that their fresh-fruit bunch supply, including supply from smallholders, meets Mars' sourcing charter.
 

Image: Women artisans who work in INDIGENOUS' supply chain. 

By Matt Reynolds

Fashionistas now, for the first time, can see beyond clothing labels with the Fair Trace Tool developed by my company, fair trade fashion retailer INDIGENOUS along with Worldways Social Media. This new tool, a QR code on hang-tags, offers transparency throughout the garment’s supply chain, including a glimpse of the artisans who actually made it and insight into the product’s social impact. The content is delivered in text, video and animated map format.

We founded INDIGENOUS on the principle that great design starts with paying workers fair wages, having fair working conditions and using materials that do not harm our environment. As my co-founder, Scott Leonard, CEO of INDIGENOUS says, “No one should suffer or die to make clothing. Just the opposite – they and their families should prosper. That’s how it is with our supply chain. That’s how it can be with others. Let’s not make this harder than it is.”

The global fashion industry is a trillion-dollar business, rampant with social and environmental injustices. Child labor, slave labor and hostile working conditions exploit workers. Pesticides used in cotton fields and toxic dyes used in yarns and fabrics devastate lives, land and water. The good news is that we can do something about it.

Collaborating for a better future

We at INDIGENOUS hope that 2014 is the year of collaboration. As brand leading manufacturers, we must collaborate and share best practices, even as our earth’s natural resources are being depleted. Yes, there are solid efforts being made by such organizations as the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, which has made great strides to accelerate the implementation of the Higg Index into the apparel industry. Fair Trade USA, the Ethical Fashion Forum, The Source, Fashion 4 Development, and Fashion Revolution Day are all working toward this same goal. However, these organizations alone cannot accelerate change or bring transparency to the fashion industry fast enough to make a significant dent in the huge trillion-dollar fashion machine.

Our consumptive standard of living, especially in the U.S., is exhausting precious natural resources in record time and has unnecessarily killed thousands of innocent hard-working people. Fossil fuels, formed millions of years ago, have been pulled from the earth at exponential rates, past their tipping point, in just the last 200 years. We are living in an unsustainable “energy orgy.” Look around you. I would bet most every object in the room around you has been derived from or involves fossil fuels in some manner. Your clothing is not excluded. Approximately 8,000 chemicals are used to make a typical item of clothing… not to mention the incredible injustice in terms of human rights and worker safety. Yet we choose not to see.

On April 24, 2013, the collapse of the Rana Plaza Building, just outside of Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital city, killed more than 1,100 garment workers. In November 2012, 112 factory workers died in the Tazreen factory fire in Bangladesh. Then, on Dec. 1, seven people died and others were injured in a fire that destroyed a garment factory and its cardboard dormitory that housed workers in the Italian town of Prato, in Tuscany. Each month, more tragedies like this happen that are not reported. When are we gong to join forces to keep this from occurring again and again? Now, imagine if the companies who produced clothing in these factories were in constant, direct contact with the workers and shared their supply chain transparently with consumers. All of these tragedies could have been averted.

I believe it is not a matter of “if,” but of “when” our consumption habits and global system of economics will be forced to change. Clearly, we are not living sustainably. The interconnectivity of Energy, Economy and Ecology will be realized when our current system hits a wall. But why wait until our hands are forced, when we can use the amazing tools now available to do the right thing and start working together to share solutions available today? INDIGENOUS is calling on all brands to cooperate to shift production habits and share best practices so that we can turn this massive ship of fashion in the “humane and planetary” right direction.

Embracing supply chain transparency: The Fair Trace Tool

The Fair Trace Tool engages our end customers in the lives of our artisans and gives them insight into the social impact of an INDIGENOUS purchase. At the same time, the back end of the Trace Tool allows us to communicate directly with our artisan producers at the BOP (base of the pyramid) via cell phone-based voice and text technology.

While it is arguable that the proprietary Fair Trace Tool represents a distinct competitive advantage, INDIGENOUS is ready to share it to help save lives and promote industry collaboration, thus improving the well-being of artisans and garment workers everywhere. This is not the time to be exclusive. To bring change, we must take an inclusive and open-source approach.

Heather White, global labor expert and founder of Verite, which monitors global working conditions, commended us for improving the lives of workers in the company’s supply chain: “All over the world workers are paying the price for the clothes we wear. Environmental cost is also not factored into our purchases. The Fair Trace Tool offers consumers an opportunity to better align their belief systems with the purchases they make.”

The question is: When are we as consumers and brands going to take full responsibility for what we buy and what we make? The U.S. currently represents less than 5 percent of the global population, yet we consume almost 30 percent of the world's apparel.

The continued implementation of The Fair Trace Tool within the INDIGENOUS supply chain is exciting for us, our customers and the apparel industry as a whole. So far, the tool has provided the company with a new data set that facilitates internal analysis of its social impact and progress over time. The data shows that most artisans in the INDIGENOUS supply chain are now living above the poverty line. The percentage of those who are at risk has fallen since 2011. Also, the majority of artisans continue to feel satisfied by their jobs.

Through these efforts and with rigorous environmentally responsible standards, a brand can guarantee a sustainable product to their customers and at the same time influence purchase decisions and brand loyalty. Ultimately, we want to share our best practices and supply-chain transparency tools with any fashion brand that is striving to improve labor conditions, implement sustainable manufacturing practices and enhance communication with customers.

Image courtesy of INDIGENOUS via Facebook

Matt Reynolds, President & Co-founder of INDIGENOUS, is an ardent advocate about the positive power of business for the benefit of people and the planet. He has been a pioneer in the areas of fair trade, organics, environmental practice and the sustainability movement. He has worked for over twenty years in bringing together organizations around the world and helping to create numerous collaborative initiatives. His passion and dedication have firmly established him as a leader in the global organic and fair trade movement.

You love your cell phone and can’t spend a minute without it, right? If the answer is yes, here are three facts you should be aware of.

First, in 2012 1.6 million Americans were the victims of smartphone-related crimes. Second, one in three robberies in the U.S. include the theft of a mobile device. Third, cell phone thefts are now the single biggest source of property crime in many American cities.

In other words, not only is your beloved phone in danger of getting stolen, but it can also get you into trouble, from being the target of a robbery to even getting murdered in some cases.

Is this inevitable? Not necessarily, according to a growing number of policymakers and law enforcements officers. They believe consumers deserve better and that a "kill switch" that would make smartphones useless when stolen is the best solution to the "epidemic of violent smartphone thefts,” as New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman calls it.

But not everyone is convinced a kill switch this is such a great idea. Take, for example, the wireless carriers. They believe that there are better ways to take action against smartphone theft. Last year CTIA, the carriers’ trade group, launched a national phone-tracking database, and it supports tougher penalties for smartphone thieves.

“We encourage consumers to use currently available apps and features that remotely wipe, track and lock their devices in case they are lost or stolen, and our members are continuing to explore and offer new technologies to address these crimes, while not inadvertently creating a ‘trap door’ that hackers and cybercriminals could exploit,” CTIA said recently in a statement.

While the CTIA would probably like to frame this debate as a discussion between experts about the effectiveness of different measures or security issues, others see an entirely different issue at stake here. New York's Police Commissioner William Bratton made it very clear earlier this month, saying the reason the mobile industry hasn't already adopted a kill switch is because of  “corporate greed."

"Profit. That's what this is all about," Bratton said. "They're making $30, $40, maybe $50 billion dollars a year on new phone sales ... They're making a fortune on this. And they don't want to lose it.”

This is not just about sales of new phones, but also about keeping expenses low in the case of the wireless carriers. Lawrence Pingree, research director for market researcher Gartner, told SFGate.com that wireless companies see an all-out push against theft as too expensive. "The main goal for carriers is to keep support costs low and encourage subscribership, so antitheft technology could cause support nightmares," he said.

When you think about it this debate is actually about corporate social responsibility (CSR) and more specifically it is about the limits of CSR. On the one hand you have Bratton, Schneiderman and other officials who believe that cell phone manufacturers and wireless carriers have a responsibility to their customers to reduce the risk of smartphone theft.

On the other hand smartphone manufacturers and especially wireless carriers seem to believe that it is definitely an issue they shouldn’t ignore, but at the same time they believe it is not reasonable to expect them to take costly measures to handle a problem they believe to have a little control on.

I make here a distinction between manufacturers and carriers, as manufacturers seem to be somewhat more open to the implementation of a kill switch. Last December, SFGate.com reported that Samsung “has developed just such a feature for its mobile devices, but the Korean company has hit a snag. U.S. wireless carriers won't sell their products if they come loaded with the disabling feature.” Apple has also introduced a kill switch-like feature on its iPhones, as part of the iOS 7 update.

Still, in the case of both cell phone manufacturers and wireless carriers, it seems that for a long time their profits had (and in the case of the carriers still have) a higher priority than reducing the risk of phone theft. It shows you that when push comes to shove even companies that consider themselves to be responsible, like many of the companies involved in this debate, choose their financial bottom line over responsibility.

Let’s leave for a second the debate if there’s something wrong about framing these situations as cases of these "either/or" decisions,  as this story leaves us with two lessons that I find even more important.

First, it once again demonstrates that in general companies can no longer decide what the limits of their responsibility are – their stakeholders do it for them. In this case these are regulators in states like California and New York and Senators in the U.S. Senate who introduce new bills aimed to ensure manufacturers and carriers take action and adopt/enable the use of kill switch. It already proved effective in the case of some of the manufactures, and it will probably prove itself eventually to be effective also in the case of the carriers.

The second lesson is that this story is an example how far we are from a culture of durability. In an environment where a cell phone is replaced every couple of years at best, it might be easier for everyone -- from the manufacturers to the carriers -- to expect that consumers won’t make such a big deal about a stolen phone. And we have to admit that they’re probably right – after all, we haven’t seen consumers loudly demanding better solutions.

If the manufacturers and the carriers were in a durability mode, the kill switch or any other similar solution would have been a no-brainer. But as long as they believe that profit maximization and durability are at odds, what we get is business as usual.  This will change only when one of the main players or the consumers decide it’s time to change the rules.

Image credit: Marjan Lazarevski, Flickr Creative Commons

Raz Godelnik is an Assistant Professor of Strategic Design and Management at Parsons The New School of Design. You can follow Raz on Twitter.

With performance improving, production volumes rising and costs on the decline, intelligent battery storage systems may provide the missing piece of the clean energy puzzle, enabling customers to cut the cord linking them to utility grids and ushering in the end of the centralized electric utility business model.

Analyzing regional scenarios across the U.S., the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), CohnReznick Think Energy and HOMER Energy concluded that utility grid parity for the combination of solar photovoltaic (PV) and battery storage systems is “already here in some areas and imminent in many others for millions of U.S. customers.”

The combination of solar PV and battery storage technologies – what the authors of “The Economics of Grid Defection” dub “utility-in-a-box” – can make "the electric grid optional for many customers – without compromising reliability and increasingly at prices cheaper than utility retail electricity.”

Solar PV and battery storage: The "utility in a box"

The report's authors draw three main conclusions from their scenario analysis:

1. Solar-plus-battery grid parity is here already or coming soon for a rapidly growing minority of utility customers, raising the prospect of widespread grid defection.


2. Even before total grid defection becomes widely economic, utilities will see further kWh revenue decay from solar-plus-battery systems.


3. Because grid parity arrives within the 30-year economic life of typical utility power assets, it foretells the eventual demise of traditional utility business models.

Significantly, according to the authors of “The Economics of Grid Defection,” nationwide grid parity for the combination of solar PV and battery storage systems is likely to occur “well within the 30-year planned economic life of central power plants and transmission infrastructure.”

“Even before mass defection, a growing number of early adopters could trigger a spiral of falling sales and rising electricity prices that make defection via solar-plus-battery systems even more attractive and undermine utilities' traditional models.”

The results of analyzing four cases across five representative regional scenarios present electric utilities with a stark choice: Adapt to the emerging distributed clean energy infrastructure or face the “utility death spiral.” According to the report authors:

“New market realities are creating a profoundly different competitive landscape as both utilities and their regulators are challenged to adapt. Utilities thus must be a part of helping to design new business, revenue, and regulatory models.”

*Image credit: Kyocera

Graphs credit: Rocky Mountain Solar Institute, CohnReznick Think Energy and HOMER Energy, "The Economics of Grid Defection"

Newsletter Image Credit: Flickr/joncallas

By Marc J. Lane

Social entrepreneurs throughout the nation are preparing to gather for this year’s Social Enterprise Alliance Summit 2014. Many are learning that their choice of legal entity can make a big difference for them—in funding, governance, and signaling—as they seek to drive positive social change. The two most popular legal forms, each designed with the mission-driven venture in mind, are the “low-profit limited liability company” or “L3C” and the “benefit corporation.”

Low-profit limited liability company (L3C)

The L3C is a new, for-profit entity form available to social entrepreneurs who seek the legal and tax flexibility of a traditional LLC, the social benefits of a nonprofit organization, and the branding and market positioning advantages of a social enterprise. The L3C is a potent tool to attract private capital to ventures with modest financial prospects, but great potential to make a positive social impact.

The opportunity turns on an under-appreciated feature of the Tax Reform Act of 1969. It’s widely known that the law obligates private foundations to distribute at least 5 percent of their assets every year for charitable or similar purposes, helping explain the feverish competition for grants among charities. But the 1969 law also created an attractive alternative for foundations to satisfy their 5 percent payout obligation, the “program-related investment” or “PRI.”

A PRI can take a variety of forms—a loan, a loan guarantee, a line of credit, a linked deposit, or even an equity investment, so long as it’s for qualified purposes and meets other technical requirements. Most L3Cs are organized primarily for charitable or educational purposes, and those purposes qualify. But an amendment to Illinois’ L3C law, which recently was unanimously passed by the state’s Senate, would extend the L3C’s reach beyond charitable and educational organizations to include religious, scientific and literary organizations, organizations that foster national or international sports competition, and organizations which seek to prevent cruelty to children or animals, all PRI-permissible purposes under federal law. I was privileged to draft both the existing legislation, which itself was unanimously passed by both houses of Illinois’ General Assembly, and the pending amendment.

Like any other LLC, the L3C shields its owners from debts of their enterprise and affords them flexibility in governance and tax planning—but with one striking difference: An L3C’s articles of organization are required by law to mirror the standards for program-related investing imposed on foundations by the Tax Reform Act of 1969. So the business form itself gives the foundation comfort that the target company’s purposes and activities are constrained by statute to accommodate PRIs.

Because the foundation seeks social impact over economic rewards, it forgoes market-rate returns. And by taking on higher risk in exchange for lower financial returns, the foundation’s investment can be leveraged to attract private-sector investment that otherwise might not be tapped to support the social venture.

Not only can a foundation’s financial commitment to an L3C’s mission draw urgently needed private investment into the social sector; it also can elevate the foundation’s role to that of a social venture capitalist which has a stake in both the viability of the enterprise and the social impact it delivers. Just as important, the L3C establishes clarity and consistency in ordering mission-vs.-money priorities so that the venture’s stakeholders’ disparate objectives, including the foundation’s fiduciary duties, can effectively be harmonized, giving each investor the benefit of its bargain.

The benefit corporation

The benefit corporation is a new class of for-profit corporation chartered to create a material, positive impact on society and the environment, and to report on its overall social and environmental performances as vetted against an independent third-party standard.

The officers and directors of benefit corporations are protected from shareholder claims when corporate decisions reflect the non-financial interest of a company’s workforce, community and environment at the expense of financial returns to shareholders.  In demanding greater transparency and accountability of its management, the firm is expected to more easily attract funding from social-impact investors and the loyalty of consumers who favor socially responsible and sustainable companies.

The L3C and the benefit corporation are useful platforms to help empower social  entrepreneurs who are tackling society’s most vexing problems. I’ll be honored to unpack real-life L3C and benefit corporation successes when I present “Social Enterprises from Conception to Operation:  The Legal Issues” at Social Enterprise Alliance’s 2014 Summit.

Image credit: dhester, morgueFile

Marc J. Lane is President of the Law Offices of Marc J. Lane, P.C., Chicago.

El Niño may be back for a visit this year. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center released a statement Wednesday saying that current indicators point toward a possible El Niño warming trend for this coming summer or fall.

That could mean more rain for some areas on the Pacific Coast, and particularly for the rain-starved counties of Southern California.

But it could also mean further weather upsets in other regions of the country, as well. According to the CPC, there is a 50 percent chance that El Niño will develop, although current “atmospheric and oceanic conditions reflect ENSO-neutral,” which is climatologists' lingo for the calm before an El Niño or La Niña change. The fact that there has been a warming (not a cooling) trend in ocean waters recently suggests that the Northern Hemisphere can likely expect an onset of warmer conditions for the following winter. For hurricane-prone coastlines, that can mean a milder season, but the warm ocean currents can also herald other problems, such as reduced fishing in some areas that depend upon the nutrient-rich cool waters later in the year.

According to the CPC, in order for an El Niño to be forecast, eastern Pacific temps must be at least 0.5 C (32.9 F) degrees above the average temperature for three months in a row. Those three months of course, usually happen at the warmest time of the year in the Pacific, which is summer and early fall, but an extended increase usually impacts the weather conditions in various parts of the world, creating anomalies in South America and the Pacific Coast that influence farming and fishing industries.

The CPC’s “El Niño Watch” is also in keeping with the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s long-term forecasts, which suggest that there may be more days of extreme rainfall for many areas of the Northwest Hemisphere. The USGCRP’s 2009 report coalesced findings from a diverse source of research concerning past climate behavior, temperature trends and projections regarding anomalies in settings where human behavior was a consideration (such as through the elevation of fossil fuel-based pollution).

According to the report, some areas of the country (the Northwest, Northeast and Midwest in particular) can expect increasing rainfall due to global warming. That also means more potential stress on those areas that are subject to flooding in say, the Pacific Northwest.

“Observations show a consistent picture of surface warming and reduction in all components of the cryosphere (frozen areas, like the Arctic, Antarctic and glaciers)” says authors Peter Lemke et al in their supporting paper, Observations: Changes in Snow, Ice and Frozen Ground (Chapt. 4 of the report).  That surface warming not only means stress on the cryosphere, but more shifts in weather that undermine the critical snowpack that is needed to replenish watersheds through the spring and following summer.

So while drought-impacted areas like Southern California, Arizona and Texas may benefit from a few months of a possible El Niño anomaly this year, the long forecast, say says the USGCRP, points toward drier conditions for some and more time slogging through rainy days for those more accustomed to a colder, snowier winter.

Image of Stillaguamish River flooding, Washington State: Walter Siegmund

In May 2013, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (“OHCHR”) commissioned Dr. Jennifer Zerk to prepare an analysis of the effectiveness of domestic judicial systems in relation to business involvement in gross human rights abuses. Last week, Dr. Zerk released her report.

The report is damning and a must-read, in part because it does not blindly focus on the failure of businesses to respect -- or at least refrain from participating in gross violations of -- human rights. As the report illustrates, there is consensus that corporate involvement in human rights violations is a major problem and something that the international community is obliged to address. And, no matter how much energy we pour into attacking businesses and shining a light on these abuses, they will surely continue.

Importantly, the report highlights that it is rare for a company to be accused of directly committing a gross human rights violation. (She highlights five such cases, all but one of which centers around events related to either the Iraq war or World War II.) Instead, the vast majority of cases involve a corporation that was allegedly complicit in gross human rights violations carried out by a third party (usually a private security force, militia or government armed force). The most notorious involve companies in the extractive industries -- Total, Shell, Unocal, Rio Tinto, to name a few -- that purportedly enlisted or benefited from violence aimed at facilitating the continued extraction of the desired resource. In the now famous Kiobel case, for example, plaintiffs alleged that Shell had hired the Nigerian government to violently repress protests against their drilling operations. Similarly, a 2002 case against Total alleged that the company provided logistic, financial and military support to security forces of the Myanmar government, which then went on to engage in forced labor, deportations, murder and other gross human rights violations.

There are many other such cases, too, and they all rightly provoke outrage towards business. Yet, as Dr. Zerk points out, what is perhaps most troubling is that, when these violations do occur, victims have virtually no recourse against the corporate perpetrators. Impunity, in other words, continues to prevail. As Dr. Zerk observes:  “While these cases may attract the theoretical possibility of sanctions under the criminal laws of many states, ... the reality of the experiences of those seeking justice is very different.” (Zerk, Page 7). This reality is underscored by any number of recent cases, like last week’s Chevron decision purporting to invalidate the Ecuadorean plaintiffs’ record verdict against Chevron for Texaco’s alleged contamination of Lago Agrio.

Rather than focus on companies, then, the report takes aim at domestic legal systems. “Domestic law on business involvement in gross human rights abuses is in an undeveloped state,” Dr. Zerk writes, and “states are not engaging with the problem of corporate involvement in gross human rights abuses at all proactively.” (Zerk, Page 52) The United States, with its Alien Tort Statute (“ATS”), is arguably the most receptive to such claims; however, as we have seen, U.S. courts are in the process of severely limiting the ATS' reach. In other words, “from the perspective of individuals and communities seeking to hold companies accountable for the abuses they claim they have suffered, the system is patchy, uneven, often ineffective and fragile.” (Zerk, Page 103) Dr. Zerk is hardly the only expert to reach this conclusion.

So what to do?  Dr. Zerk stresses the importance of strengthening the rule of law and encouraging formal judicial mechanisms to address these obstacles. Clearly, that is a meritorious area on which to focus. Yet, “this is not to overlook the importance of access to remedy at [the] local level.  The fact that so many claimants prefer to bring their claims in faraway jurisdictions than seek local remedies is revealing in itself.” (Zerk, Page 104)  She does not go so far as to say that we should explore the encouragement of non-judicial dispute resolution mechanisms, but I think it is something to seriously consider.

The U.N. Guiding Principles on Business & Human Rights, for instance, refer specifically to non-judicial grievance mechanisms, which may be either state or a non-state based. (See, for example, Principles 27, 28 and 31) According to the OHCHR Commentaries on the Guiding Principles: “Gaps in the provision of remedy for business-related human rights abuses could be filled, where appropriate, by expanding the mandates of existing non-judicial mechanisms and/or by adding new mechanisms.” One such non-judicial grievance mechanism, which could be either state-sanctioned or otherwise, is alternative dispute resolution (“ADR”).

ADR has been touted for its ability to build trust, encourage rationality, reduce bargaining costs and increase the range of enforceable contracts. And although ADR also has its drawbacks, which may even include further undermining the rule of law, a recent study suggests that merely educating people about their rights in an ADR system has a beneficial effect on peaceful conflict resolution.

That study, published in the American Political Science Review by, among others, Chris Blattman (Assistant Professor of Political Science & International and Public Affairs at Columbia University), evaluated an education campaign designed to promote ADR across 86 communities in postwar Liberia. The authors found that the educational campaign itself resulted in shorter and less violent land disputes. In treated communities -- i.e., those that were targeted by the campaign -- “land disputes were 29 percent less likely to remain unresolved at the end of the year, property destruction decreased by 32 percent, and disputant’s were 10 percent more satisfied with outcomes.”

In other words, even “modest education campaigns have the potential to change behavior around longstanding disputes.” (Blattman, Page 20) This is supported by Dr. Zerk’s recommendation that stakeholders focus on the role of “promoting awareness of legal rights and remedial mechanisms” (Zerk, Page 11), and the OHCHR’s conclusion that “[e]nsuring access to remedy for business-related human rights abuses requires also that States facilitate public awareness and understanding of these mechanisms, how they can be accessed, and any support (financial or expert) for doing so.”

States and businesses both have a duty to help provide victims of human rights abuses with access to appropriate remedies, and ADR and ADR-related awareness campaigns are one area where the two could work together to fulfill that duty. While there is no substitution for an efficient and unbiased judicial system, perhaps there is a role to play for non-judicial mechanisms, too.

Image credit: Flickr/US Mission Geneva