BUSINESS: The Ultimate Resource

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Viewpoint: Paul Hawken Social Entrepreneurship: A Model For Sustainable Growth

Paul Hawken is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, and best-selling author, widelyrespected for his ideas on how corporations can achieve sustainable, ecologicallysound development. His latest book, written with Amory and Hunter Lovins, is Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution. In it, Paul Hawken highlights the costs and consequences of 200 hundred years of industrial development, introducing four strategies necessary to perpetuate abundance, avert scarcity, and deliver a solid basis for social development. In this article, he argues that a whole range of natural resources and heritagefrom the human genome to water and the airwavesare being dominated by corporations, and he outlines the consequences of this development.

The Anti-globalization Movement Is Really the Fight against the Corporatization of the Commons
The people who are arguing most articulately and vociferously against globalization are protesting against the corporatization of the commons. These commons that are being corporatized include the human genome, seeds, water, food, airwaves, media, and if the draft agendas of the World Trade Organization and other bodies are passed, much more. The commons include stories, music, and culture as well. They include place and self-determination. They include the ability for people to decide what is and what isnt acceptable as a product in a certain locality or region or place. They include tradition. All these areas are being taken over or corrupted by corporations. Corporatization is caused by the unending and pressing mandate for corporations to grow their capital. If a corporation doesnt grow its capital, there is no change in valuein fact, there would be a loss of value. Furthermore, if financial capital and shareholder value does not grow, then the leaders of a corporation are replaced. Managing a large corporation is like being on a gerbil wheel. As soon as the wheel slows down to a certain level, a new gerbil with fresh legs is brought in. Not so long ago, if a C.E.O. led a company with a seven or eight % return on investment, that was considered to be a creditable performance; and they could keep their job. Now, seven or eight % is seen as unsatisfactory, often leading to a C.E.O. being quickly replaced by someone who promises greater returns. What kind of world is it where, in the words of Hazel Henderson, capital is divine? Its a world where capital has the right to grow, and its a higher right than those of people, cultures,

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BUSINESS: The Ultimate Resource

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places, and qualities that historically have been our commons. What happens is you have a corporate sector that is way over-developed, possessing enormous over capacity. Corporations are seeking new areas in which they can grow, and theyre going into areas that just werent imagined before. Corporations are continuing to colonize, whether they realize it or not, and this is an extension of Western cultural exploitation that goes back 500 years. This new weight of colonization is having disastrous results. For example, many major multinational utilities want to effectively privatize water supply in many parts of the world. Similarly, three of the worlds largest biotechnology corporations want to control 90% of the germplasm of 90% of the caloric food intake of the world. Ted Turner said that in the end there will only be two media companies in the world, and he wants to have a stake in one of them. Rupert Murdoch thinks the same way. McDonalds opens up 2,400 restaurants a year. Right now, one out of every five meals in the United States is fast food, and McDonalds wants that to be the case everywhere in the world. Coke says that it has 10% of the total liquid intake of the world, and its goal is to go to 20%. Or is it 30%? These are absurd and devastating goals for corporations. These challenges are being answered by people who are suffering, not simply by white middle-class protestors in Quebec, Genoa, and Seattle. In many places in the world where corporations are trying to implement their visions of how to grow capital, they are meeting resistance. They will continue to meet resistance from the world as long as they try to colonize what people have held in common throughout the history of humankind.

The Corporatization of the World Is the Disastrous Loss of Diversity

The way to create healthy, vibrant economies and societies is through diversity. We know that scientifically. Any system that loses its diversity loses its resiliency and is more subject to sudden shocks and changes from which it cant recover. The corporatization of the world is the loss of diversityits forcing uniformity upon people. As Arnold Toynbee said, the sign of a civilization in decay is the institution of uniformity and the lack of diversity. And thats exactly what were seeing; only it is called harmonization. The degree to which a company or a corporation honors diversity and then allows it to emerge from a place, a country, locale, culture, tribe, or city is a good thing. The degree to which it tries to enforce a one-size-fits-all formulaic solution to diet or media or agriculture is, in my opinion, going to be seen in hindsight as just as much a criminal act as the deracination of indigenous people by the Spaniards, the genocide of Native Americans, or the enslavement of African Americans. We look back at those things now and feel ashamed. We will look back at what we are doing right now to the world and see it as a violation of humanity. The economic principle of subsidiarity says that decisions, whether they be economic or political, should always be made at the smallest or closest unit relevant to the issue in hand, because those are the people who not only have the most at stake but who also have the experience and knowledge with which to make an intelligent decision.
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Of course there are problems with subsidiarity when theres a breakdown as in the Congo or Rwanda. Nevertheless, subsidiarity within a true democratic system is the proper way to make economic decisions. Rather than talking about globalization, we should instead be talking about the localization and interdependence of economies. Those corporations that help with localization should do very well. For example, energy companies should introduce technologies to create local sufficiency with respect to energy, to the degree that it is possible. ; Whether it is a global company or not, it is a company that is helping a region, a locale, a city, or a village. A company that introduces the means to increase self-sufficiency is doing even better. A company that seeks to dominate local economiesto buy out, take over, or make that economy or country dependent on themis violating humane economic principles.

Well Remember the Social Entrepreneurs and not the Business People
It is true that this view of the corporation is not a very charitable assessment. Can I imagine corporations as brilliantly adaptive and helpful? I dont have to imagine it: there are 70,000 or 80,000 companies in the United States alone that are doing fantastic work with respect to society, the environment, energy, agriculture, and water. And there are more companies all over the world that are acting similarly. Its just that I cant think of any that are listed on the New York Stock Exchange or appear in the Fortune 500. I dont think real solutions scale up in the way that large corporations do. The truly innovative acts of entrepreneurship that are occurring now and will continue to occur are no longer in business. Social entrepreneurship: thats where the action is. Thats where the real innovators are. Thats where youll find the people who will be remembered 50 to 100 years from now. We wont remember a single person whos in business except as a footnote. Apple says, Think different. Who are they talking about? People like Gandhi, Einstein, and Muhammad Ali. Theyre talking about people who actually took care of other people, who cared and were compassionate. Ive asked myself, when will the Rosa Parks of the business world step up and sit at the front of the bus? It would take an amazing person to do that. Essentially, that person would say that we have marched too long in lockstep with policies and assumptions that are harmful. Its time that we spoke the truth about what we do, about what happens to us as people, about the enormous polarization of wealth, about how we treat people, and about how globalization is a race to the bottom, enforced by rules that nobody agreed to. Well remember that person, but I dont think theyd have a job for very long.

The Best Sources of Help

Book: Hawken, Paul. Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution. London: Earthscan, 1999. A GBN interview with Orville Schell 1

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