SusCon: putting sustainability to the test

Auma Obama, the sister of the President of the United States, was the star attraction at the event held on 27/28.11.2012 in Bonn. The programme of the two-day sustainability conference, that was being held for the third time, was packed with prestigious speakers. The venue was interesting – the former German Parliament building, that most of the visitors experienced live for the first time. A delightful artistic dimension was given to the event by objects on display by the Heidelberg artist Dao Droste. In the foyer, there were also about 25 information stands that encouraged participants to stop and discuss issues during the breaks in the proceedings.

460 participants from 38 countries had registered to attend this third SusCon Conference, which was around 50 % more than on the last occasion two years ago. The former plenary chamber in the German Parliament (picture below), still with “Only for Members of Parliament” on the entrance door, was at most a third full, with about 150 people listening to each lecture. Nevertheless, the organisers – Organic Services, Colabora and Forum CSR International – were well pleased with what they had achieved. However, the operators of the stands and Volkswagen AG, that provided four Golf Blue-Motion electric cars for free accompanied test drives (picture), would like to have seen rather more people interested in what they had to offer.
 

Auma Obama, about whose work in development aid in Kenya a book has been published this year, was well placed in the programme and spoke at the beginning of the conference. “Sauti Kuu”  - powerful voices” - is the name of her project in Nairobi, with which she tries to raise awareness among unemployed young people to encourage them to take their fate into their own hands. A graduate linguist, who lived for 16 years in Germany, she made it clear at the beginning of her speech that the concept of sustainability has to be defined more precisely to make clear what it means. She said that concepts like Green Economy or sustainability have been watered down, and people sometimes use them to mean the opposite of what was originally intended. “Long term social and economically responsible development”, however, can only have one positive meaning, and it can’t acquire negative connotations. “Sustainability is a great word, but it has to be filled with life,” Obama said.
 

In many parts of the world, health, food and a place to live are the key issues for the poor  who have no time to occupy themselves with sustainability, Obama went on to say. This is why trade has to be organized in a fairer way. Instead of setting up more and more so-called free trade zones, with powerful trade partners taking charge and exploiting the countries producing raw materials, fair trade has to be made much more robust.  “Everybody has to be on board” was her plea. Development must not be top-down but has to be bottom-up, from the grassroots level and encompassing all social classes. “The problems have been known for decades. Why is nothing being done about them? Why do people just discuss them and write reports instead of taking action?”  With this question, that goes to the heart of the matter, she concluded her speech.
 
This hit the bull’s eye, and may well have had an emotional impact on some of those who shortly after listened to the boss of Rewe, Alain Caparros (picture). As the representative of one of the three giants in the conventional food trade in Germany (€48bn turnover in 2011), he, however, had hardly anything new to say, and there was certainly nothing revolutionary in his agenda. As well as making general statements of principle, he mentioned the Rewe label Pro Planet that was introduced two years ago. The current 200 articles are to be increased to 300 in 2013. The label is for products that have at least some ecological benefit – for example, carrots from the region that are, however, grown conventionally, bread that is produced in energy-saving facilities and bananas via a cooperation project with Chiquita that “protect biodiversity”.  Rewe presented their concept on a big stand in the foyer but the company’s press department would not allow photographs to be taken of their employees on the stand, unless we submitted our text in advance for their approval. (Picture: Alain Caparros)
 

After being incarcerated in an Egyptian prison for 100 days (see our earlier report), Helmy Abouleish appeared again on the podium, restored to his old self (picture). Convincingly, and with his usual accomplished delivery, he presented the successes of the “miracle on the Nile”. Either in the plenary chamber or in the working groups, other speakers presented projects concerned with sustainability, like Pavan Sukhdev, the author of the book “Transforming Business for Tomorrow’s World”. He talked about his idea of reforming the world economic system called Corporation 2020. He advocates stakeholder capitalism instead of shareholder capitalism and is committed to an eco-social market economy. The Plan Vivo Foundation, that is based in Scotland, has been developing financing models since the middle of the 1990s for poor farmers in Mexico, so that they can own land and implement eco-system projects.
 

Interesting stands with new projects were to be found in the extensive foyer of the former German Parliament building. For example, the Ewapu project: germ-free drinking water can be obtained from dirty brackish water by means of special filters and without using chemicals or heating. “We can filter out all pathogens up to 20 nanometers that exist in Africa,” the developer Markus Pohlhausen proudly explains. After a development phase of three years, the water filter, that does not use electricity and is operated with a crank handle, is ready for the market. It has been financed exclusively with private funds. Water polluted with salmonella, the ebola, hepatitis A and polio viruses cease to be a problem. (Picture: Developer of the revolutionary water filter, Markus Pohlhausen, on the right. On the left: supporter and musician Rhett Brewer).
 

Via his “Clear Light Campaign”, Nicolaus von Wilcke’s firm, Nexplan, is committed to supplying environmentally friendly and inexpensive light (picture). An example is the recently developed Waka-Waka-Lamp: an LED torch powered by a solar module provides people in the poor regions of Africa, Latin America and Asia with electric light at night. The very poorest can thus save a lot of money and kerosene. Marketing got underway this year and the torch is sold in developing countries for around 10 US-dollars.
 

Some light relief and artistic enrichment was provided by the Vietnamese artist from Heidelberg Dao Droste. On the steps up to the entrance of the former plenary chamber, she displayed sculptures of bronze heads and in front of the podium clay masks were laid out. Everyone delivering a lecture received from the artist a clay mask - symbolizing openness and connection with the earth – and they then chose a spot to place it on the floor.
 

Comment: it was apparent at the sustainability conference in Bonn that in the food sector – apart from the wholefood trade that was hardly represented – the sustainability strategies of the conventional trade have so far been unconvincing, and it has failed to develop any wide-ranging strategies at all. Of course, all firms are thinking about the issue, and some projects are already operating. For a good two decades now, a few hundred organic and fairly traded food products have been offered by retailers. However, when these initiatives only achieve turnover in the lower single-digit range (with the exception of Tegut and Feneberg), despite years of development, we must be justified in asking whether what we are seeing here are merely token, fig-leaf projects. “We’re doing something, but the consumers are contradictory beings, and that’s as far as we can go.”  Such is the message of Alain Caparros from Rewe.

The next conference is scheduled to take place from 20 to 21 May 2014 in the World Conference Center in Bonn (the former German Parliament).

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