Scottish Steering Group of the Business Council for Sustainable Development-UK
The Scottish Steering Group of the Business Council for Sustainable Development-UK (BCSD-UK) was created following 'a General Meeting hosted in Edinburgh in November 2003' where the BCSD-UK Secretariat asked 'for a mandate for an Action Plan. With this given, a programme of work was agreed with the Scottish Executive which provided financial support to the initial stages of this, up to the end of March 2004'[1]. It is funded by the Scottish Executive to the tune of �100,000 in 2002-03 and �100,000 in 2003-04 [2] This is despite the fact that its board is made up of some the biggest companies in the world.
This indicates how business is seen as the innovator and solver of environmental problems by the Scottish executive and also by the Blair government. Illustrated also by Blair's comment in a speech in 2000 that 'Fifteen years ago, if you said business will help save the environment people would have laughed at you. Today, I believe this is a serious proposition', this however simply shows the degree to which he operates in a parallel universe. (Address to the Green Alliance-CBI conference on the environment, 24 October 2000, [3])
In fact the WBCSD is at the forefront of corporate attempts to undermine environmental action, lobbying worldwide against regulation and in favour of voluntary 'solutions'. In Scotland the environmentally conscious members of the BCSD include road building consultancy Scott Wilson, the biggest users of natural (Water) resources Scottish Power and the brewers Scottish and Newcastle and the oil giant Shell. Even more unsavoury is the membership of Pegasus-International, the debt collectors, hardly a sustainable business. Inchferry Consulting, amongst whose clients are BP are also members. The Scottish BCSD is involved with the Executive in the Scottish Waste Minimisation Steering Group, in the Scottish Industrial Symbiosis Programme and in the Scottish context of FutureBuild (Scotland - Scottish Steering Group, [4]). Don't know what these are? Don't worry, you are not meant to.
The beauty of partnership working between government and industry is that you never have to tell the public what you are doing; you just get on with it in subterranean discussions and quiet agreements. Handily enough the Executive have invited the BCSD into its consultation on the Scottish Green Jobs Strategy. The WBCSD is a peak business lobby group dedicated to resisting environmental progress. In Scotland it is at the heart of the policy process. Indeed the Executive 'agreed [BCSD Scotland's'] programme of work' and even 'provided financial support to the initial stages of this, up to the end of March 2004'. [5]
