Accountability & Transparency:

Introductory Issues

-It is crucial to make companies more transparent so producers and consumers can make better and more sustainable decisions. There is presently a culture of secrecy in our culture.

-A lot of problems come up with green washing because green washers are not held accountable.

-There is a problem with people (consumers) having confidence in claims of green & sustainable products, which works against sustainable development.

-Full information is critical when procuring green goods. If the origin of goods can’t be confirmed, it leaves room for people to take advantage of the system.

-People sometimes overestimate or underestimate the risk of certain products. It is important to have full information to make accurate decisions

-How do we evaluate risk? Specifically in the context of LCAè I.E. cradle to grave.

-How does transparency affect public policy?

-Transparency and accountability will let the good actors truly succeed (baseball/steroids analogy)

-Corporate transparency & the financial meltdownèSarbanes-Oxley was suppose to prevent the current crisis. Why did it fail?

Encouraging Accountability and Transparency Through Regulation:

-Radical transparency is the way to education the consumer. There is asymmetry of information with Corporations having more information than consumers.
Why doesn’t every product have a label that contains all of its products?

-Macro-trend: Transparency is just becoming the normèGlobal Reporting Initiative (GRI=standardized framework for reporting).

-The world is moving towards third-party verifiers. How do we get a broker (i.e. verifier/certifier) to be credible?

-Are their legitimate issues to not being more transparent? E.G. intellectual property concerns. IP is not respected in third world, which makes it difficult to label products (e.g pharmaceuticals)

-If companies had to disclose what was in there products to a governing agency that certified green products, but didn’t disclose to the public the ingredients of a product could both the public’s and the companies interest be protected?


Creating Transparency & Accountability Through Trust:

-How do we really embed trust within our culture? Part of building trust is prevention on game playing and putting an end to misinformation.

-What does scale mean in terms of sustainability: can we actually legislate certain behaviors? On a certain level (large scale) there is no way to avoid game playing.

-Conflict between top-down and bottom-up change: Which one is more effective? Who are the brokers that can bring about change and stimulate change?

-Top down regulation is no longer working. In order to get to the level that we want to get to we need to change individual behavior and that needs to be bottoms up.

-What is the tipping point for green products when price is no longer the most important purchase factor?

-Is this somewhere that a review system online would work? E.G. would you rather go see a movie based on IMDB reviews or a single movie critic? Creating an online forum for review green products could work.


Conclusions

-We are tending more to dispersed systems and local economies, which is naturally building more accountability through closer and stronger relationships.

-Regulation, brokerage and consumers are all interacting together. All three need to engage in mutual reinforcement.

-How have we broken bad habits of the past: Smokingèregulation. Higher taxes, ad-campaigns against smoking and limits against tobacco company advertising.

Suggested Follow-Up Reading

-Tribes by Seth Godin

-Two articles: The Quantum Theory of Trust. Moving From Blame to Accountability. (attached here)