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Investors and project planners must take cautionary measures when executing climate mitigation and clean energy projects to prevent adverse effects on Indigenous and other local communities, advocates say. These impacts encompass land, human rights and resources. Yet during many of these projects’ planning phases, there is frequently a lack of local community engagement, a dearth of educational awareness and a failure to provide sufficient security, says Natalie Bridgeman Fields, co-founder of Accountability Counsel, a nonprofit that advocates for people harmed by internationally financed projects.

Clean energy projects too often put Indigenous communities at risk

"These are community-based organizations that are being threatened. Their advocates are being detained, tortured, silenced,” Fields said in an interview with TriplePundit. “Even if it's a renewable project or a solar project, that doesn't mean there's not violence or oppression in that country just because it's a well-intentioned project.”

Among its various work, Accountability Counsel manages a database of environmental and human rights abuses that have occurred during internationally sponsored projects. The database has logged more than 1,600 complaints across 137 nations within 15 industries.

According to these records, community projects with a conservation or clean energy focus too often end up not being sustainable, and in fact, can harm local communities. Fields said. Instead of involving local citizens, these projects frequently take a "top-down" approach rooted in the perspective of funders from faraway places. In this process, Indigenous and other local communities are frequently excluded from any level of involvement on a project and have been even been forcibly displaced from lands for conservation purposes.

Climate projects that ignore social and environmental responsibility are costly. A failure to include local communities and assess repercussions creates long-term community distrust against clean energy companies and reputational risks for companies and investors.

Supporting and defending the marginalized

At Accountability Counsel, Fields works to protect and defend communities and their local environments from both climate and clean energy projects that aren’t inclusive or lack any plans to mitigate any harmful impacts on Indigenous and other marginalized communities.

She points to the Cerro de Oro hydroelectric project in Mexico to illustrate the harm of such projects and how the organization defends local communities. This project was created to produce electricity for private companies. It also threatened local health and safety, as well as the potential destruction of a local freshwater spring, Arroyo Sal. Accountability Counsel supported three Indigenous communities in Oaxaca to end the U.S. agency, Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC)-funded project. The group’s efforts included providing trainings regarding OPIC’s Office of Accountability (OA) and support in drafting complaints to the OA.

In another case, Accountability Counsel produced a video and supported Liberians' complaints to OPIC in 2014. OPIC had approved the financing of the biomass company Buchanan Renewables (BR) and its project, which involved the cutting down of rubber trees for biofuel purposes. Backers of this project said it would revitalize Liberian family farms and create sustainable energy. However, it instead led to human rights and environmental abuses and even the sexual abuse of Liberian women by BR employees.

Most recently, Fields recounted the findings of an Accountability Counsel team’s work in Nepal, where the group supported Indigenous and traditional communities confronting various risks by the construction of high-voltage transmission lines to be used for transmitting hydropower. Funded by the European Investment Bank (EIB), local residents claim this project forced them from their land without compensation, and others had even been beaten, run over by bulldozers and detained without charge.

There are many factors that contribute to the challenges around Indigenous and traditional communities’ sense of security and health and safety. And these issues are exacerbated when global finance flows into countries with weak regulations, ongoing censorship of the local media and government corruption, Fields says. In preventing such harm to local communities in the first place, planners and investors need to start building relationships and trust from a project’s very beginning.

What’s needed: Assessment, education and engagement

A big challenge is that Indigenous and local communities often don't know they actually have the right to engage on equal footing with what are often well-funded and powerful companies and organizations, Fields says. These communities are in need of local partners who are well resourced and can come from a position where they can speak out safely, she explains.

To prevent climate and clean energy projects from exacting harm on these communities, she points to the need for “reversing” these projects’ planning phases to start with a more community-centered approach. In this method, investors and project planners would work to understand the local context, practice community engagement, and obtain free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) with local communities in order to minimize any harm prior to launching the projects. In this strategy, local engagement is “wise and sustainable,” and is often the first part of due diligence that does not occur, Fields says. 

Another area for improvement is environmental and social impact assessments. While industry performance standards for these assessments exist, such as those set by the International Finance Corporation, these guidelines are often little more than a simple tick-box approach, Fields says. Instead, impact assessments should screen for any potential negative repercussions that can result from a climate or clean energy project. In doing so, plans can be designed with such repercussions in mind, and they can inherently be avoided or attenuated.

The inclusion of local communities and investing in their long-term wellbeing is crucial for the success of climate and clean energy projects. Investors and project planners driving clean energy and sustainable technology projects must reduce any negative and harmful consequences of these projects as early as possible, and this requires improving community engagement and planning immediately.

Image credit: Tom Fisk/Pexels

Research has long suggested that life started in the ocean. So why wouldn’t our first defense against climate change start with addressing the oceans, considering they cover 70 percent of the planet’s surface?

Planetary Technologies aims to do just that. Planetary bills itself as the first climate technology company that intends to curb climate change with a patented method of isolating carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in the oceans, the largest carbon sink on the planet.

This process occurs organically when the ocean pulls carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but artificially engineering the process could speed up the rate of which we can begin to reverse the effects of climate change to the planet. The company says the process is akin to an antacid, restoring the ocean’s pH levels and storing carbon in the ocean for up to 100,000 years.

“The global community agrees that we need a three-pronged approach to stop the harmful effects of climate change: adapt, reduce emissions and remove carbon,” said Jason Vallis, vice president of external relations at Planetary. “Planetary’s technology does all three, the most critical being our ability to remove carbon dioxide from the air.”

Planetary’s team of scientists has also developed a way to purify alkaline rocks, also called mine tailings, which are the residual effects of mining operations. The result is a solution that Planetary can then take to various ocean outfall sites and add to seawater, where the carbon can be sequestered across the world's oceans as bicarbonate and carbonate ions. 

“The rising acidity levels of the ocean are damaging entire ecosystems. In the long-term, this will affect the food supply for millions of people,” Vallis said.

This development will help save — and even restore — life in the oceans, spurring a natural regrowth of marine species, he explained. Planetary says that it carefully calculates the proper amount and pace to introduce heightened amounts of alkalinity to the ocean to avoid ecosystem shock.

“The mild, nontoxic antacid we create is designed to be released into the ocean through existing, regulated outfalls such as wastewater streams where the compound and the benefits can continue to be closely monitored,” Vallis added.

Planetary’s technology also creates green hydrogen as a byproduct, which industries can then use as a fuel source, with the outcome of reducing, or even eliminating, their consumption of fossil fuels.

In addition to its ocean restoration technology, Planetary’s three-pronged process also involves extracting metals from mining waste, which can then be used in batteries. This is essential in promoting an electric-powered future.

The company is currently testing its technology in labs across the world and says it will run larger ocean trials later this year.

Planetary’s efforts are already making large strides. Last month, the company won an XPrize Carbon Removal award for its accelerated carbon transition platform. The $100 million XPrize Carbon Removal challenge, launched by Elon Musk and the Musk Foundation, is a four-year international contest designed to speed up climate solutions from companies that can sustainably extract and reallocate carbon.

Planetary was among the top 60 out of 1,100 organizations that applied for the XPrize challenge, and one of 15 organizations to receive the competition’s milestone award. It was the only organization that captured all benefits of carbon redistribution.

In the next year, Planetary will use its $1 million prize to accelerate the development of its technology in hopes of competing for the $50 million grand prize.

Planetary has also received the OceanShot award from the Ocean Startup Project and was a semi-finalist for the Ocean Innovation Prize, an award from the United Nations’ Blue Climate Initiative.

So, what’s next for Planetary? The company’s intention is to secure one gigaton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year starting in 2035.

“It's ambitious, yet achievable,” Vallis said. “Our accelerated carbon transition platform is designed to scale globally with the right support.”

Image credit: Sebastian Voortman via Pexels
 

Many of us have long been reminded about food insecurity one way or another. Did your mother ever tell you to eat your dinner because there were people starving in other countries? When food recovery nonprofit Replate founder Maen Mahfoud was growing up in Syria, his mother made him and his brother do something about those hungry people in their own community. “My mom used to cook us so much during lunch,” he told TriplePundit, “and before anyone touched the food, she would ask my brother and me to go on our bikes and do a run to take some of that food and distribute to our neighbors, who were facing challenges, or had their partners outside of the country, or working in construction.”

It was really hot in the middle of the day in the Middle East, and he and his brother hated doing such an errand, but it planted a seed. That seed is now his organization, based in the Bay Area, which works in eight states with companies like Chipotle, Netflix and Snap Kitchen, with plans for expansion both in the U.S. and abroad.

A nonprofit founded upon witnessing food insecurity amongst wealth

When Mahfoud first moved to California, he was both thrilled and dismayed. “I was extremely excited to be here at the forefront of advanced technologies that are really solving the world’s problems,” he said. But at the same time, he watched people across from the Twitter building in San Francisco digging through trash bins to find food. “It was a reflection point for me,” he added, “thinking of my childhood and of living in a place where we’re creating companies that deliver cookies in less than 20 minutes from home to home."

That sparked in him the idea to marry the two. It started with taking excess food from corporate campuses and local restaurants and delivering them to shelters, soup kitchens, and encampments for the unhoused. Americans waste nearly 40 percent of our food. Why then, Mahfound wondered, can’t we address food insecurity and the environmental impacts of food waste at the same time?

The environmental impact of food waste

Throwing away so much food not only wastes the product, but it also has significant knock-on effects. Rotting food in landfills (where most food waste goes) emits methane and carbon dioxide, contributing to climate change. But that does not even reflect the full story. When food is wasted, so is the energy and water used to grow, process, distribute and prepare it. This is part of what’s known as the food-energy-water nexus, which makes clear the inextricable link between the three.

Food recovery programs like Feeding America have done a lot to bridge that gap, but they’re still only reaching a fraction of the food that goes to waste — and 38 million Americans are estimated to be experiencing food insecurity, a number that increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Mahfoud, part of the problem is the need for more scalable technology solutions. “You can see clearly there’s an issue of the supply of food and there’s an issue of the demand of it,” he told TriplePundit. “So how do we actually connect that supply to the demand?”

A business model that not only tackles food security, but provides much-needed data

Mahfoud’s solution was to address the problem at the food service level rather than the household level. Replate works directly with businesses that have a surplus of food and nonprofits that are in need using a data-driven dashboard. “The impact metrics that we provide for our clients are very accurate,” Mahfoud told TriplePundit, “and they’re able to engage with their stakeholders on sustainability and environmental and social impact numbers.” 

Scalability is a key goal for Mahfoud. Replate hires employees at a living wage or uses contractors to reflect the costs associated with delivering high-quality surplus foods, and also works directly with food providers to create a partnership that factors in accountability for food waste. The organization also supports other local food recovery organizations, like Denver Food Rescue or Rescue Leftover Cuisine, who benefit from logistical help or revenue sharing programs. “We try to build an ecosystem of food recovery in different regions, rather than trying to replace them,” Mahfoud said. “That’s the whole idea of empowering food recovery organizations.”

The platform also gives businesses and nonprofits insight into the kind of food they provide to end users by providing nutritional information on the surplus food. This has a two-fold benefit: helping to reduce “donation dumping” but also providing essential macronutrients and micronutrients to people who experience food insecurity and higher levels of prolonged malnutrition. The business-to-business tech platform allows food suppliers to track not only the delivery of the food, but also the social and environmental metrics like pounds of food recovered, meals created, which nonprofits benefited, and how much carbon dioxide and water were saved in the food system.

Generating impact with an eye to the future

Replate has recovered more than 3 million pounds of food to date, creating nearly 50 jobs in the process. The food it has rescued has resulted in the savings of 900 million gallons of water and diverted 6.75 million pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere. Nevertheless, Mahfoud has an even bigger goal: “Replate envisions a world where nothing expires. The way we think of it is, the population is growing. Conflict is increasing. Pandemics, climate change, so many challenges that affect our potential to grow food and to feed our growing population.”

Further, Mahfoud would like to create an infrastructure to maintain a circular economy for surplus food to help address food insecurity. “Instead of trying to create more of that [surplus] food, how do we repurpose what we have in the most transparent, scalable, efficient way possible?”

As health scientist and immigrant, Mahfoud sees his experience as a benefit for his work, bringing “a different perspective to what a safety net is and how community building happens.” The combination of science and empathy brings a sharp focus to his work. “At the end of the day, we should always keep in mind the end user… the person who is experiencing food insecurity, the family that has a need for a certain kind of food, and what kind of food they need.” 

Image credits via Replate blog and Facebook

In speaking to workplace diversity consultant Kim Crowder about Amazon’s racial equity audit, you get a sense of its true significance. We’ve seen the buildup to this moment, Crowder told TriplePundit. We’ve seen high warehouse injury rates, under-paid employees, inequitable hiring and promoting. We’ve also seen the impact of employee activism, she said, although the real changes have yet to come. 

Brookings Institution Fellow Molly Kinder brought the audit into context when speaking with CNN Business. She said, “Amazon is by far one of the most successful companies during the pandemic. They’ve seen just enormous growth, large profit in-creases and big share price increases,” But, she added, those who are “really seeing the real fruits of that financial success,” are the “disproportionately white” executives and major shareholders. In 2020, about 20 percent of Amazon’s corporate and tech workers were Black, Latinx, Native American or multiracial, compared to just over 60 percent of warehouse and call center workers.

What’s so special about Amazon’s audit?

Amazon isn’t the only large corporation being forced to take a hard look at its racial landscape. Apple is conducting a civil rights audit. Tesla is facing a suit from the state of California concerning alleged racism and harassment at a manufacturing plant. Google parent Alphabet is being scrutinized over board diversity. Johnson & Johnson shareholders are pushing for their own racial justice audit.

Well, the list goes on. Amazon’s initiative starts to look unspectacular in a landscape of so much reckoning, especially when you take into account the lackluster way the company has pursued the audit. Matthew Sweeney, a spokesperson for New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s office, expressed some concerns in a statement to CNN Business: “Comptroller DiNapoli and the state’s pension fund look forward to learning more about Amazon’s proposed racial equity audit, but remain concerned that the company has provided few details and has made no assurances that the audit will be independent.” DiNapoli had previously brought forward a shareholder proposal requesting that the company undergo an independent review of how it handles civil rights, equity, diversity and inclusion. 

What is impressive about the story, Crowder said, is how workers voiced their concerns and finally gained the attention of the shareholders of the second-biggest company in the United States. Most recently, a Staten Island warehouse created the company’s first U.S.-based union, the Amazon Labor Union. Crowder also referenced a petition that over 600 warehouse workers signed and delivered in 2019, calling for improved working conditions.

“I think that that is what's most powerful to me, is that the reason they're having this audit is because of those folks in the warehouse pushing forward.” That’s one effect this news could have, she said — the realization that employees have a voice, and they have agency.

Is a roadmap to racial equity in store?

Amazon’s audit could be a warning to companies — if they take it that way — but it could also be a roadmap, if the leadership takes recommendations to heart, Crowder said. For example, Amazon may be asked to do a better job of taking qualitative data into account. That’s something Crowder emphasizes in her work building equitable and inclusive work environments. Issues around safety, for example, can come down to the qualitative, she said. 

The case for considering qualitative data can be described like this…workers aren’t simply robots hired to get a job done. Treating them as such doesn’t pay off. Crowder said a productive organization sees its employees in a humanistic way. It’s no secret that Amazon has had a hard time retaining hourly workers. Some have observed that the company has even built a high turnover rate into its business — but unsustainably, as recent worker rights efforts have shown.

The business case for racial equity and inclusion

There is a business case for building diversity, equity and inclusion into a workplace. In leadership, McKinsey and Company has found that those most diverse executive teams are one-third more likely to claim “industry-leading profitability.” And when it comes to a more equitable work landscape, the economic benefits could equal almost $3 trillion in gross domestic product.

For Amazon, though, already an incredibly successful company, another question might be more relevant. Crowder asked, “Is the organization willing to make that change? Is that part of the organization's moral code?” In moving forward with this audit, that’s what Amazon is going to have to ask itself, she said.

Image credit: Tim Mossholder via Unsplash

As a result of a Green Century Capital Management shareholder proposal, the nation’s largest pharmacy chain, CVS Health, has announced its goal to reduce virgin plastic in its store-brand packaging by 50 percent by the end of the decade. 
 
Leslie Samuelrich, president of Green Century, complimented CVS for taking its plastic use seriously. 

“Corporate goal-setting to stem production of new plastics is crucial for protecting wildlife in our oceans, reducing waste in our landfills and safeguarding human health,” Samuelrich said in a public statement.

Pushing CVS to become a sustainability leader

In addition to the virgin plastic reduction goal, the company says it plans to eliminate problematic and unnecessary plastics from its store brand packaging by 2030 and agreed to disclose plastic footprint metrics for most of its store-brand packaging. From the point of view of Green Century, these actions make CVS a leader on its plastic packaging efforts, surpassing such retailers as Walgreens, which as part of the Walgreens Boots Alliance has established a goal to reduce plastics in its private label packaging by 30 percent by 2030, and Target, which has gone on the record saying it plans to decrease the use of virgin plastic within its branded product lines at least 20 percent by mid-decade.

CVS has been moving towards reducing its plastic use since 2020, when the company engaged World Wildlife Fund to audit its Store Brand packaging portfolio and launch new sustainable packaging goals. 

“While we were encouraged to see CVS working with WWF on plastic packaging, we decided to engage to ensure that the company’s ambitions matched those of its peers when it comes to goal-setting on plastic packaging,” Annalisa Tarizzo, a shareholder advocate within Green Century, told TriplePundit.

On the same day CVS announced it was reducing use of virgin plastic in its packaging the company also announced a partnership with World Wildlife Fund and the organization’s activation hub, ReSource: Plastic, focused on reducing plastic waste and increasing the sustainability of materials within its packaging portfolio.

“This collaboration is a good signal that CVS is taking its approach to plastic packaging seriously and wants to be a leader in the space,” said Tarizzo.

A banner proxy season for Green Century

The CVS announcement caps what Tarrizo explained as a successful proxy season for Green Century, as it has engaged companies on various plastic-related risks through shareholder proposals. For example, a joint shareholder proposal from Green Century and As You Sow prompted Coca-Cola to announce its goal to have a quarter of its beverage portfolio globally distributed in refillable or reusable containers by 2030. ODP Corporation, the parent company of Office Depot, agreed to set an absolute plastic reduction goal for its owned brand packaging and ecommerce operations. Newell Brands has set a goal of at least 20 percent non-virgin plastic packaging for the manufactured goods portion of its portfolio.

In addition, 95 percent of the shareholders at the Jack in the Box annual meeting voted to support Green Century’s sustainable packaging proposal. Tarrizo noted that it was the highest-ever vote on an environmental or social shareholder proposal opposed by management. 

Green Century’s plastic packaging proposal received a 13 percent vote from shareholders at the Tyson Chicken annual meeting. Tyson has significant inside ownership, so when only accounting for independent shareholders, the proposal received a 59 percent vote, Tarizzo told 3p.

Shareholder activism shows no signs of slowing down

The number of shareholder proposals to address climate change has increased since the Security and Exchange Commission’s decision last November to widen the types of issues it allows shareholders to raise at annual meetings. The SEC wanted to make it more difficult for companies to block shareholder bids around climate targets, paid sick leave and other social issues. As of mid-March, a record-breaking 529 shareholder proposals had been filed on environmental and social issues, an increase of 20 percent from the same time last year, according to As You Sow and the Sustainable Investments Institute. More shareholder proposals are making it onto ballots as the SEC has only approved about 16 percent of companies’ bids to remove proposals, compared with about 50 percent last year.

Shareholder proposals are an effective means to advocate for environmental and social risk management within companies, Tarizzo told 3p. Large and small investors alike can raise their concerns with the companies they invest in, hold those companies accountable, and provide a way to push for action on issues such as climate change, plastic pollution, and others even when government action may be stalled or not possible, she added.

The urgency of reducing plastic use becomes more acute with each passing year, as plastic pollution is anticipated to grow from 11 million metric tons annually to 29 million by 2040, causing adverse impacts on wildlife and ocean health and risks to human health. According to As You Sow, in order to keep the plastic pollution crisis under control, companies must reduce their plastic demand by one-third by 2040.

Image credit: Miosotis jade via Wiki Commons
 

After months of lobbying against efforts by Europe to restrict the import of unsustainable oil palm, Indonesia, the largest producer of the world’s most used consumer food oil, made a shocking announcement — an export ban on palm oil, to last for at least a month. The repercussions are likely to be felt in your local grocery store, both along the cooking oil aisle and also in prices for the many processed foods — cookies, spreads, ice cream and bread — that use palm oil as an ingredient.

“With Indonesia’s surprise ban on exports, the world is really left without a backup plan,” said Shara Ticku, CEO of the biotech oils company C16 Biosciences, in a press statement.

The reasoning is the global shortage in food oils caused by the war in Ukraine, which, alongside Russia, is a top producer of sunflower oil. The Indonesian government is concerned about rising prices domestically, and the ban is partly, some believe, to limit the political fallout.

“With the Lebaran holiday approaching, when millions gather to celebrate the end of Ramadan, the government felt it needed to be seen taking more decisive action and finally announced a blanket export ban,” James Guild, an expert in trade, finance, and economic development in Southeast Asia, wrote in an op-ed for the Diplomat.

To some, this may sound like a positive. Palm oil has been derided for being a key driver in the loss of crucial habitat for endangered species including rhinos, elephants and orangutans, primarily on the Indonesian islands of Borneo and Sumatra. Perhaps using less of it would help protect these critically important landscapes?

Unfortunately, this export ban likely will do little to benefit the climate, because the reasons for the ban are purely political and economic, not environmental. But it does point at a need for more attention to the use of so much palm oil, and other food oils, to produce biofuels for transportation.

The problem with palm oil isn’t due to the nature of the oil palm tree, which, in tropical regions, is among the most productive oil producing crops in the world when measured by yield per-hectare. It is how and where oil palm is grown — too often, on tropical forests or peatlands. The conversion of these carbon-rich landscapes to monoculture oil palm plantations has made Indonesia one of the top emitters of greenhouse gasses, primarily due to land-use change.

Palm oil can be sustainable, if grown right, and efforts like Palm Done Right and the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil have made significant progress in decoupling palm oil and deforestation. But it’s not enough, and the reason has nothing to do with food. 

While much of the discussion around Indonesia’s palm oil ban is focused on its use as a cooking oil, that is just one of many uses for the oil. In fact, its initial rise as a global commodity in the early 2000s wasn’t for its use in ramen noodles or Nutella, but for use in biofuels.

A big driver of palm oil’s growth was when, in 2003, the European Union (EU) added a mandate that 10 percent of transport fuel mix come from biofuels, part of its greenhouse gas emissions reduction strategy. Palm oil quickly became the most popular choice due to its high productivity and low price, and imports to Europe grew by an astounding 400 percent between 2008 and 2018, when 65 percent of European palm oil was for transportation use. It was only later, when concerns about hydrogenated oil led major brands to search for a cheap alternative, that palm oil imports also rose in the United States.

In recent years, however, concerns about the climate impacts of palm oil began to lead to a shift. The key impetus was the conclusion of a stunning study from Transport and Environment, a European NGO, which found that, when comparing life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions, palm oil produced three times the emissions of gasoline. A policy meant to reduce emissions was actually resulting in increased emissions, primarily due to deforestation.

For Indonesia and neighboring Malaysia, which together account for upwards of 85 percent of palm oil production globally, losing the European biofuels market meant less demand. It got so bad that in 2019, before the pandemic, oil palm was at record low prices globally. So, both countries decided to increase demand at home. How? Biofuels.

The first move was to increase mandates for the inclusion of palm oil-based biodiesel in domestic transportation fuel. In Malaysia, 20 percent of fuel must come from palm-oil-based biodiesel, while in Indonesia, that figure is 30 percent — and the nation’s leadership hopes to increase it. There’s little to no sustainability requirements for palm oil destined for biofuels use, so it could be argued that all the palm oil boycotts and consumer pressure have merely led to conflict palm oil being burned in Indonesia rather than eaten abroad.

Palm oil may be the worst culprit when it comes to climate impacts, but it’s not the only one. Other food crops, including rapeseed (canola), corn, soy and sugar, are also used to produce fuel. A huge amount of global agricultural land is used to produce food that is turned into oil. And nearly all of these biofuels are worse for the climate, from a life cycle analysis, than petroleum gasoline. 

Instead of cutting down Indonesian forests, Amazonian jungles and other landscapes to grow inefficient food for energy, we should prioritize investments in clean energies that have clear benefits for the climate and environment. That might include second-generation and waste-based biofuels, which don’t rely on food crops like palm oil.

The crisis in Ukraine, and Indonesia’s export ban, should be a wake-up call for the planet. We produce more than enough cooking oil to feed the world — the problem is that we put too much of it into our cars, trucks and planes, where it does far more harm than good. It’s time to shift to a more sustainable system.

Image credit: PxHere

My view of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs has been shaped by exposure to many corporate offerings, as well as my personal history that includes lived experiences in the Civil Rights movement of the mid-to-late 1960s. In the time between then and now, I’ve become familiar with a plethora of government programs that provide funds for minorities for housing, education, healthcare and workforce training (to name a few).

It's safe to say that these efforts were all well-intended, but none represented the gold standard. For example, despite the Equal Pay Act of 1963, in 2020 women still only made 84 cents on the dollar compared to a man’s wages. And race is still the most common basis for discrimination in filings with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), rendering questionable the effectiveness of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In our continuing effort to “level the playing field,” corporate social responsibility (CSR) is now almost synonymous with social justice in the larger context of making the world a more equitable place. After all, that’s the long reach DEI programs often establish for themselves.

But lest our efforts to achieve diversity end up on the program scrap heap with others, it matters that CEOs and DEI leaders are not blind to the reality and political climate that exists today — and still threatens to derail what has already been a long slog toward diversity and equity. 

Beyond mere politics, the social contract — our agreement to live peaceably with one another despite our differences, founded on commonality — is being threatened.

At its most basic level, a society — whether that exists in the form of a village, a book club or a nation — depends on respect for the common denominator to survive. Along the way to societal decline, it’s easy to be distracted by pressure points that individually, while important, take on catastrophic dimensions when taken as a whole: vigilantism, anti-Semitism, book banning, the breakdown of law enforcement to serve and protect, voter suppression laws, and government imposing itself in matters of healthcare, education, and even the relationships we would have with our children and medical professionals. 

Two million students in 86 school districts across the country have had their access to books restricted because of book bans this school year, and anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. reached an all-time high in 2021. 

In reality, DEI programs often exist in close proximity to the unhealthiest social trends of the day. 

And what happens when the social climate and the corporate DEI philosophy conflict? 

The triangular relationship involving Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the Walt Disney Co. and the state of Florida's HB 1557, also known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, is a good example of stakeholder-driven values that superseded a competing path a corporation may have taken. In fact, Disney expressed no obvious objection to HB 1557 until its employees and then locally-organized interest groups demanded the opposing stand. The lesson here is that Disney’s hero status was thrust upon it by an important bloc of citizens, and only then did the company respond.

The massive number of companies that flock to Texas, particularly the Austin area, represent the same double-speak when it comes to living the DEI mission statement. The number of new businesses and expansions in Austin reached almost 200 in 2021. In the first three months of this year alone, 47 companies either expanded their footprint or established new facilities in a state that has some of the most oppressive voter laws, restrictive reproduction laws, anti-gay and transgender laws, book banning policies, and the same issues Disney has had to confront in Florida.

A sampling of those businesses reflects that each has a clearly stated anti-discrimination policy, and you can find a DEI mention on most websites. Yet they come, contributing wealth to the state of Texas in a display of hollow patronage to the equal employment and DEI concepts they would promote.

That big business compromises morals to fatten the bottom line isn’t startling, and surely the economic development team in Austin offers juicy incentives to attract incoming businesses.

But at the end of the day, an inauthentic DEI program harms the human element, due to inauthentic promises made to people. And in terms of authenticity, even the most giant corporations can be exposed as frauds — think Amazon, Google and the company behind Facebook, all suffering from employee and shareholder concerns that were considered to be irrelevant based on their wealth and size, and arrogance.

With a forceful commitment to bring about true equity as best as they are able and support common values, corporations have a remarkable opportunity to simultaneously make a difference and make money. There is a beneficial link between profit and respectability which is capitalism at its best!

Image credit: Amy Elting via Unsplash

Business leaders who want to expand their community service portfolio have long relied on public libraries, parks and other cultural-recreational platforms for corporate giving. Now a movement is afoot to make urban public transportation systems free of charge, and that could provide another high-profile opportunity to exercise corporate social responsibility on the broad platform of universal public benefit.

Free urban transit as an all-of-public benefit

The free urban public transit movement faces some difficult headwinds. From a corporate perspective, one obstacle is the perception of misplaced charitable giving.

The fact is that universal, free public transit would directly benefit many people who don’t need charitable giving. Urban mass transit provides a vital service for many people who can’t afford a car, but it is also a major convenience for upper-income residents and commuters, who save considerable time and expense by keeping their cars at home. 

On the other hand, public libraries and parks have set the stage for providing free transit to all. From an all-of-public perspective, free urban transit is a matter of open access to a framework that supports the whole community. Just as a city needs libraries and parks, it needs open-access transit.

Why eliminating fares for public transportation makes bottom-line sense

One factor working in favor of free mass transit is the bottom line. That may seem counter-intuitive, but on average, transit systems rely mainly on subsidies. Fares account for just a fraction of revenue, and that income is chipped away by the expense of collecting and processing those fares. 

Fare enforcement is another expense, one that can go beyond the transit agency to have an impact on any municipal budget. The decriminalization and legalization of marijuana provides a good analogy in that regard: When social costs outweigh any benefit from enforcement, it’s time to re-examine the status quo.

To the extent that race or socio-economic status influence fare enforcement, the prosecution of fare-beaters also raises profound equity issues in the criminal justice system.

The COVID-19 effect

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, free urban transit was already becoming common overseas. It was also beginning to take hold in the U.S., though just barely.

Just before the pandemic erupted in the spring of 2020, reporter Abigail Johnson Hess of CNBC took a deep dive into the free transit issue. She described how the “Zero-Fare Demonstration Project” under way for public buses in Olympia, Washington, arose from bottom-line considerations, including the loss of fare box suppliers and increased costs for plastic fare cards. Cashless apps were considered, but rejected as too expensive.

The pandemic has now prompted more cities to look into fare-free transit to help restore ridership.

Last summer, Pew Research took note of the bottom-line feasibility of free urban transit, using Kansas City’s “ZeroFareKC” program as an illustration. The city adopted fare-free rides in stages, beginning with students and veterans prior to the pandemic before moving to an all-free system.

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Critics of such fare-free systems have argued that homelessness and crime would go up and chase riders away. However, the Kansas City transit system recovered ridership more quickly than other systems on the heels of the pandemic. Additionally, Kansas City reported a 35 percent drop in public safety issues, mainly because the vast majority of incidents previously involved fare disputes.

The city also countered the prospect of unsheltered people endlessly looping rides all day by requiring all passengers to disembark at the end of a route.

Planning is everything

The ZeroFareKC program has become something of a test case for free urban transit in the U.S. As noted by Pew, the experiment appears to be an overall success, but transit planners need to be wary of pitfalls.

Making urban transit free is the easy part. Making free transit serve more people, more conveniently is the more difficult part of the equation. Rides that are overly long and complicated are not useful, even if they are free. In addition, transit needs can change as cities change and grow, requiring constant adjustments to routes and schedules.

Transit planners also need to consider the size of their workforce. Earlier this year, National Public Radio took note of driver shortages in urban transit systems. In addition to sick callouts from COVID-19, drivers are reporting burnout from dealing with passenger incidents.

How corporate leaders can get ahead of the free transit curve

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City set the stage for corporate giving in the free transit area by partnering with the city and other transportation partners to launch ZeroFareKC.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield cited better access to healthcare and quality of life improvements as its motivation for supporting the program.

ZeroFareKC is also soliciting additional corporate support to keep the initiative afloat. From a bottom-line perspective, planners argue that the free fare system contributes to the city’s image as a world-class destination for employers. They also note that riders would spend $1 million monthly on bus fare without the free ride program. Instead, they can distribute that cash throughout the local economy.

Free transit and the parking conundrum

Of all the reasons for corporations to advocate for free transit, the issue of access to urban parking could be among the strongest. Car culture has created many opportunities, but it also ensnarls urban employers in car-centered infrastructure. On-site parking lots and garages can eat up valuable real estate, and finding space in public parking lots can be a challenge.

Employers don’t necessarily have to wait for a universal free fare program in order to encourage their employees to take mass transit. Some employers already provide incentives for their employees, and now Philadelphia’s SEPTA transit system is taking the idea a step farther by incentivizing employers.

Last March, SEPTA announced the launch of its “SEPTA Key Advantage” program with the participation of Drexel University, select Penn Medicine facilities, and Wawa convenience stores in Philadelphia.

“The benefits extend to everyone traveling in the region, not just those who use SEPTA,” Drexel explained. The school noted that the program “will help alleviate demand for parking, particularly at facilities such as hospitals where spaces are needed for patients.” 

The fare cards can help resolve part of the problem. A more holistic solution, though, would be to eliminate fares for everyone. Instead of deploying valuable law enforcement on fare disputes, municipal budgets could focus on more serious crimes and social solutions.

In addition, rail and bus service are just two elements in a much larger picture. Urban employers can also help advocate for a more expansive view of transit options by lobbying in favor of walkable planning and bike lanes, too.

Image credit: Danylo Istominov via Unsplash
 

The term “starter home,” a phrase long used to describe one steppingstone toward building wealth for young people, will soon become long forgotten as the average price of homes across the U.S. continues to skyrocket. But despite an acknowledgement that the country needs more affordable housing, no one can seem to agree on how we as a society can ensure that people who make a decent wage have the means to afford a safe and secure roof over their heads.

Many of the factors behind the cost of housing becoming far out of reach for more and more Americans has to do with government, specifically zoning laws. Racist policies that have driven many zoning laws certainly contributed to this problem, as well as the outdated snapshot of the American dream, which instilled in many of us that success means a single-family home with a two-car garage in the suburbs. Some of the reasons why outdated residential zoning codes remain on the books border on the ridiculous, as in one tiny Silicon Valley town that has pushed back against any affordable housing due to the perceived threat of mountain lions.

Government failures and NIMBYs notwithstanding, the wider building industry — spanning the value chain from the construction sector to local real estate agents — also must share responsibility for the struggle in which many people now find themselves. As corporate lobbying has contributed to this and other social problems people often face, it’s about time the industry deploys its influence to convince the feds as well as state and local governments to transform how they approach housing so everyone has a shot at the housing market’s final end game: building wealth for future generations.

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Current zoning laws have allowed for a cycle that has made it extremely difficult to build multi-unit dwellings, as in condominiums, townhouses and even duplexes. At the same time, builders have had little incentive to push for meaningful rezoning, as market forces made the construction of single-family homes a very profitable venture. Consumer expectations haven’t helped, either. “Success has been defined upward, and every generation needed a slightly larger home — or more recently, McMansion — to show they’ve made it,” Patrick Sisson wrote for Curbed two years ago.

The industry’s proclivity to build single-family homes became amplified even more during the pandemic, as people sought more space in the suburbs and small towns, with single-family homes often becoming the most lucrative investments for players within the residential real estate market. Meanwhile, real estate investors purchased almost 1 out of every 7 residential homes put on sale during 2021, further limiting the availability of affordable housing stock, especially in neighborhoods where the majority of residents were Black. 

While many people of color have long been priced out of neighborhoods in which their families and peers have lived for several generations, racist assumptions, in addition to zoning policies, have also contributed to the affordable housing crisis nationwide. Proposals for affordable housing units over the years have been frequently met with loud disapproval from local homeowners, who often assume that their homes’ values will decline if “others” move in — even though more than one study has found that the impact of any affordable housing units on surrounding home values is, at worst, negligible. 

Such discussions over property values drown out a larger point that individuals and leaders of all stripes must grasp, yet this a battle that is still an uphill one. “But the point of building affordable housing,” Sarah Holder for Bloomberg recently wrote, “is not to boost property values for neighboring homeowners: It’s to get more people safely housed.”

As more companies and industries seek to prove their sustainability, corporate responsibility and ESG (environmental, social and governance) chops, it’s about time the building and real estate sectors start to divert some of their lobbying efforts and show that they can be a force for social good.

Compared to other sectors, such as the healthcare and finance industries, construction and real estate companies don’t shell out as many dollars in an effort to court politicians. Nevertheless, the construction industry spent more than $55 million last year on lobbying efforts, and the National Association of Realtors plunked down about $44 million alone to influence policymakers during the same time frame. Add those dollar amounts together and compare it to the almost nine-figure sum with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its notorious reputation for influencing the halls of government: The Chamber spent just over $66 million on lobbying initiatives last year. 

As more municipalities struggle to rewrite their zoning laws, any financial muscle from those stakeholders responsible for building and selling America’s homes would help move this cause along — and open more doors to (at least relatively) affordable housing, increased opportunities for families to build wealth for the long term and, in the end, additional profits for these companies once the absurdity of America’s zoning problem is resolved.

Image credit: Isaac Wolf via Unsplash