Climate change is going to be the way of life of the twenty-first century, and its impact is going to be felt by all parts of mankind—the North, the South, rich countries, poor countries, mainland countries, island countries—undiscriminatingly and with growing ferocity. Accordingly, effective responses are expected from all the countries that form part of this increasingly fragile planet.
The brunt of the responding task has thus been borne, rightly, by governments. After all, it is the mandate of governments to maintain political and social stability, safeguard their citizens and protect their countries’ resources. Realizing that no one country, however powerful, can achieve the needed climate changes alone, international consultation and cooperation has been the chosen approach of the world’s countries. COP 21 (the 21st Conference of Parties on Climate Change), held in Paris in December 2015, is the latest effort of the international community to come to grips with the gravest problem faced by mankind during the last two millennia.
Now a rising chorus of voices, within and outside academe, is making the point that the job of countering climate change is not the governments’ alone and that the private sector—more precisely, the business communities of countries—has a big role to play in the effort and should be called upon to play that role in more committed fashion. After all, business enterprises extract the mineral and other resources of the Earth, plant crops and graze animals on vast tracts of farmland and process the mineral and agricultural raw materials in ways that generate carbon emissions, pollute the air and exhaust Earth’s water resources.
The everyone-must-contribute-to-the-effort groups are now saying more forcefully that the business communities of the world should stop making pious statements and should begin to—in the words of one COP 21 commentator—’walk the talk’ about fighting global warming. The main target of those commentaries was the community of multinational companies, whose operations encompass countries that possess the mineral and agricultural wealth and countries that process them into industrial and consumer products. The multinationals are properly singled out, for, after all, they are by definition the corporate sector’s biggest emitters of carbon dioxide.
In point of fact, a number of leading multinationals have been doing more than pay lip service to the idea of countering climate change through what have come to be known as adaptation programs. A commentary that I read around the time of COP 21 spoke of the adaptation programs of two well-known multinationals, namely, Unilever and Mars.
In this country, consumer products maker Unilever has apparently been providing calamity-hot localities with tree seedlings free of charge. And in another country in which it has extensive tea operations, Unilever has apparently been working to restore denuded land and distributing higher-yielding plants of tea growers.
On the other hand, confectionery maker Mars has apparently been working to strengthen the cocoa farmers’ resilience by dramatically improving their yields and livelihoods. And Mars has also been collaborating with the major suppliers and processors of cocoa—five on the suppliers’ side and four on the processors’ side—in a pooling of knowledge designed to lead to a common platform called Cocoa Action. Mars’ chief sustainability officer was quoted by the commentary as saying that “the best (climate change) adaptation strategy requires uncommon collaboration in the market as well as time and money.”
And what about this country’s own big business establishments? Are they walking their talk? Have they put together climate change adaptation strategies and have they been pursuing them determinedly? The government and the Filipino people need to know the answers to these questions. A special committee composed of the frontline government agencies (Neda, DTI, DoE and DENR) and the business and industry groups should be able to provide them.
E-mail: rudyromero777@yahoo.com