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Business and Environment Roundtable
Engaging the Private Sector
by Ben Packard, ELP Fellow 2000-2002
 Given the current set of demands on the planet, businesses need to be actively engaged in developing the capacity and infrastructure for true resource productivity improvements. Businesses can't proceed without acknowledging the implications of unstable life support systems means for the planet and the balance sheet. If the private sector as a whole controls access to capital and our natural resources, it seems to me that the environmental movement must find a new way to work with this sector. Until recently the private sector has been for the most part ignored as a potential ally, and this must change.
As a result of recent ethical tragedies in business practices and examples of morally bankrupt corporate leadership, innovative businesses are seeking ways to deepen their commitment to environmental and social responsibility, which presents an opportunity for other sectors in the environmental movement to engage the private sector. The private sector needs other sectors as much as the rest of the movement needs it.
Real environmental issues will only get pushed to the background if we continue to perpetuate the perception of business as a unified group of valueless, maladjusted and malicious individuals. It is time to start to champion the better (not perfect) choices certain private sector players are making to redirect their capital planning and natural resource utilization decisions in ways that are truly innovative. At the same time, it is incumbent on businesses to offer greater transparency and productive engagement strategies with other sectors within the environmental movement.
The private sector operates within a set of incentives that currently favors the unproductive use of natural resources and inequitable distribution of environmental impacts. Critical environmental issues will be addressed when we join forces within the private, public, nonprofit, and academic sectors to alter incentive structures to capture the full costs of our activities to the planet. But in order to do this, we need to move beyond the handful of companies who have adopted such a strategy for differentiation. We need committed individuals and organizations from all sectors to acknowledge our mutual dependence if we are going to successfully record and redress the environmental and social impacts on the balance sheet.
Ben Packard is environmental affairs manager for Starbucks Coffee Company where he is responsible for initiating and implementing corporate environmental programs.
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