Global warming, the exhausting of energy reserves and water supplies, pollution, insufficient land to support a growing population, abject poverty and uneven distribution of resources were identified as the world's major problems by delegates at China Daily's 21st CEO Roundtable.
The event, with the theme of "Sustainable Development in China" and chaired by Dr Jane Goodall was held on December 6 at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Beijing. Goodall, world-renowned chimpanzee expert and UN Messenger for Peace, met with some thirty CEOs and leaders from multinational companies in major business sectors such as energy, petro-chemicals, technology, cars, finance, strategy consulting, healthcare, NGOs and a special delegation from the Harvard School of Public Health.

"Other countries have been through the same kind of problems that China is facing today," said Goodall, citing examples in the UK and US." China is so big and there are so many people so inevitably, environmental and other problems are going to be harder to tackle."

Two approaches

"For the model of sustainable development to be really sustainable, you need two approaches: top-down and bottom-up," said Professor Liu Yuanli, director of the China Initiative in the Department of Population and International Health of the Harvard School of Public Health.

"Leadership is needed at the planning and policy level," Liu added.He illustrated this with a story of how county government leadership in Hubei curbed deforestation by introducing methane as a cooking fuel to replace firewood, which stopped inhabitants from cutting down trees.

The role of the government

Executive Editor of the China Daily CEO Roundtable, Alexander Wan, pointed out that the Chinese government is already working on sustainable development.

"In China's 11th Five-Year Plan which is coming up in the country in a few weeks," Wan reminded delegates,"there will be a continual emphasis from top state leadership on the development of a harmonious society, which is very relevant to what we are talking about here today. It is very much about applying scientific approaches to make use of natural and human resources for the long-term benefit of all people."

David Michael, director and senior vice-president of the Boston Consulting Group, agreed.

"Clearly, the Chinese Government is increasingly taking the issue that you highlighted very seriously," he said.

But he added that even the government is not omnipotent in the face of such grave environmental issues.

"I think the experience in other countries would be that governments cannot do all of this by themselves," says Michael."And in other countries, there's more of a tradition of support from non-governmental organizations and also from domestic companies. In China, there's not such a history of non-governmental organizations, and many domestic companies are too new to have developed experience in social responsibility."

The role of companies

Gathered at the roundtable were CEOs and senior executives from Fortune 500 companies including Bayer, ChevronTexaco, Deloitte, Dow Chemical, Hewlett Packard, Novartis, Siemens and Shell. Officials from the German Embassy, the US Embassy and the World Health Organization (WHO) were also present. Goodall admitted her ethical dilemma: multinationals are both the culprit of environmental degradation and its saviours.

"If you have people continually wanting more than they need, and those people can't grow everything and harvest everything that they need for their lifestyle locally, they will go out and basically rape the last of these resources from other parts of the world," Goodall said."Thus, there is a continual conflict between environmental protection and economic growth, and again and again, economic growth wins out."

This is where the multinational companies (MNCs) come in, said Goodall, because only their moral and financial support can push change forward.

"We need wealthy people more than ever before to buy into the new technologies which start off as very expensive," she said."One of the really encouraging developments is that corporations are stepping in, and so we're having increasing support, particularly in China, from corporations that care, that do have an ethical standard."

The role of technology

James McIlvenny, president of Dow greater China, also spoke up for MNCs. "Today, I think, corporations are much more open, more willing to participate, wanting to participate," he said.

"And companies like mine believe in technology.We believe that there are technical solutions to all problems.And with the right co-operation, we can solve our issues," said McIlvenny.

Regarding technology, Liu Xiaowei, deputy director of external affairs of Shell China, said: "Whether multinational or Chinese, I do think they [corporations] all have a role to play.Being multinational, our role is to apply cutting edge technology."

Mutual understanding

Ladd Christensen, Chairman of the Global Bridge Foundation,claimed MNCs can even set the stage for global collaboration and speed up progress.

"I think corporations can play a big role in helping with tolerance and understanding between the people of different countries," Christensen said.

Alexander Wan and Selina Lo