BOOK REVIEWS

GREENING INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS editedby Jacob Werksmann, 1996. Earthscan, xxvi + 334 pp,£19.95 (pbk) ISBN 1 85383 244 8

This is a contemporary review of the roles of the principalinternational actors in environmental policy, practice andlegal compliance. It offers insights into that most com-plicated world of conventions and agreements which¯esh out international negotiations about the manage-ment of environmental resources on a global scale. Thevolume is part of a series on law and sustainable devel-opment published jointly with the Foundation for Inter-national Environmental Law and Development.

Coverage emphasizes the exponential and possiblyunsustainable growth in environmental acronyms. Itincludes: institutions spawned by the United Nations(UNEP, UNDP, UNCTAD, ICJ and GEF as well as theGeneral Assembly and Security Council) and BrettonWoods (IBRD, IMF and WTO/GATT); the more recentmultilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) covering,among other things, ozone depletion, climate change andtransnational transportation of hazardous materials,which have their own independent intergovernmentalbodies termed Conferences of Parties (COPs); and regio-nal organizations such as the European Union, the SouthPaci®c and the North American Free Trade Area with itsAgreement on Environmental Co-operation (NAAEC).

The articles, written by an eclectic group from acade-mia, environmental NGOs and the institutions them-selves, are grouped into sections covering policy making,trade, ®nance, regions, compliance arrangements, andenvironmental NGOs. The differing backgrounds of theauthors and their attempts to work to a remit which askshow these institutions have been greened, results in adegree of repetition and overlap, and also reveals a vari-ety of approaches from the purely descriptive to morecogent and pointed analysis. Those seeking constructivecriticism of the environmental role of these institutionsshould look to chapters other than those authored by staffof the institutions considered.

Although more rigorous editing might have made iteasier to plot a way through the maze of institutions, andto understand the current state of play, the end result ofthe approach adopted is to offer a realistic idea of thediffering views, styles and assumptions governing this®eld of activities. The most striking dichotomy to thisreader was that between the traditional organs of devel-opment within the UN and the Bretton Woods frame-work, and the regional organizations in Europe and

North America. The former still appear largely to begoverned by doctrines of international law epitomized inKoskenniemi's review of environmental compliance pro-cedures, in which persuasion rather than enforcement isconsidered to be the only feasible response to non-compliance.

. . . the prudent internationalist should avoidcon¯ict altogether. Instead of insisting on thevalidity of the standard (and thus condemning itto irrelevance), the diplomat should soften itscontours and detach it from the binary logic ofthe law for which a conduct can only be legal orillegal. (p. 237)

Given the underlying principles of sustainable devel-opment ± the precautionary principle, preventive actionand making the polluter pay ± such an interpretation ofthe processes of implementing international environ-mental agreements would seem to condemn most of themto failure.

At the other extreme, the European Union and its Courtof Justice (ECJ) are acknowledged as having exploitedtheir powers to the full to develop, implement and gaincompliance with their transnational environmental poli-cies. Partly as a consequence of the doctrine of sub-sidiarity, the transnational signi®cance of environmentalissues has been emphasized within the EU, resulting inthe development of the most extensive international caselaw on the environment in existence, and, in Sands' view,establishing the Court as `pre-eminent as an internationaltribunal in dealing with the legal aspects of environ-mental protection' (p. 230).

Resting uncomfortably between these alternative rolemodels are the MEAs with the various bodies they haveestablished. In some, the niche selected re¯ects the per-ceived enlightened self-interest of developed nations, asin the Montreal Protocol for the Protection of the OzoneLayer and its multilateral fund (MFMP) offering resourcesand expertise to developing nations to ease the path ofcompliance. Others, such as the UN's Global EnvironmentFacility (GEF) and its Commission on Sustainable Devel-opment (CSD), represent an uneasy compromise betweenthe desire to pursue Agenda 21 transparently andaccountably at an international level, getting privateparties as well as states involved, and the overridingemphasis still given to economic growth and trade pro-motion by IBRD, UNCTAD and WTO/GATT. There areexcellent chapters on the role of MEAs and on attempts togreen the World Bank.

The more formal and traditional of these internationalinstitutions transact their affairs purely amongst sover-

CCC 0964-4773/97/050296±04 $17.50# 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment.

BUSINESS STRATEGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT, VOL. 6, 296±299 (1997)

BUSINESS STRATEGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT

eign states, with private parties excluded. This makescompliance a matter of diplomacy rather than redress. Inthe EU, private parties have access to the ECJ, and as aresult of Maastricht, the European Parliament itself has anincreasingly important role in formulating and reviewingenvironmental policy and practice. Chapters on NGOsand national environmental funds point the way tointroducing greater local accountability and participationwithin developing nations, in accordance with the objec-tives of Agenda 21.

Tony JacksonCentre for Planning Research

School of Town and Regional PlanningUniversity of Dundee, UK

DRIVING ECO-INNOVATION; A BREAKTHROUGHDISCIPLINE FOR INNOVATION AND SUSTAIN-ABILITY by Claude Fussler with Peter James, 1996. Pit-man Publishing, xx � 364 pp, £45.00 (hbk), ISBN 0 27362207 2Claude Fussler argues that sustainable development is achallenge to business that can be met. Companies canonly survive if they develop radical, breakthrough,innovations that exhibit a substantially reduced environ-mental impact and deliver more customer value. Man-agers may guide their companies along the path fromincremental innovation to the required super innovations,but only if they have a clear understanding of the changestaking place (a vision) and the appropriate managementtools. Fussler offers both.

His vision is based on insight in worldwide demo-graphic trends (the future customer will be a teenager ofAsian, African and/or Hispanic descent); still increasingenvironmental stress (if only because ecological taxreforms are becoming serious options for politicians); andchanging patterns of value creation (the Paci®c rim, thenetwork enterprise, increased customer orientation).Future growth, markets and pro®ts can only be bene®tedfrom, seized, and appropriated with eco-ef®cient productsand processes.

But how do we know when a product or process is eco-ef®cient? Fussler's tool is the so-called eco-compass. Itaims to compare an innovation to a base case on sixdimensions: materials intensity, energy, health andenvironmental risk, revalorization, resource conservationand service extension. The ambition for eco-ef®cientinnovation should be at least a reduction to 25% (factorfour) of environmental stress and a fourfold increase inservice extension.

The eco-compass is not just presented as a roughmeasure of change. The critical issue is to identifyopportunities for radically eco-ef®cient innovations.Fussler proposes an interactive workshop model aroundthe eco-compass to do so. In this respect, Driving Eco-Innovation is a `how to' book, written by a businesspractitioner for other business practitioners. Fussler aimsto reach his uninformed colleagues, to convince them ofthe imperative to innovate, and to do this in an eco-ef®-cient way. So, in the style of writing he uses straightlanguage, sometimes even directly addressing the reader,clarifying illustrations and 17 case histories of eco-ef®cientinnovations.

However, Driving Eco-Innovation may also be read asthe re¯ection of the learning to appreciate the concept of

sustainable development by one of its leading advocatesin the European business context. Fussler's thinking isstate-of-the-art among those representatives of interna-tional business that are concerned with environmentalissues. Parts 1±3 offer a review of received concepts, suchas life cycle assessment, cleaner production, carryingcapacity, eco-ef®ciency, factor four, scenario building(backcasting) and the life cycle of innovations. It makesinteresting reading to see how the various concepts arerelated and criticized from a business perspective. Forexample, Fussler is dissatis®ed with LCA and cleanerproduction methodologies, because they lead to incre-mental innovation. The eco-compass grew out of thisdissatisfaction. It is a practical tool based on life-cycleassessment thinking, but it extends this to include futuremarket needs in the service extension dimension. Theworkshop model, involving various allies and stake-holders, is supposed to create genuinely new ideas formeeting these needs.

The question, now, is whether the self-proclaimedbreakthrough discipline will result in breakthroughinnovations that change people's lives and set newbusiness standards of environmental performance. Thiswill be an empirical question. However, if the 17 casehistories of eco-ef®cient innovations presented in Part 4are to be the empirical test, it won't. Fussler morethan once states that the `factor four' should really bea `factor ten'. However, the case histories do not scorevery high on the factor four criteria of the eco-compass,with two cases having a maximum score on only twodimensions, and 11 cases not having a single maximumscore on any of the dimensions. Apparently, state-of-the-art thinking is further advanced than state-of-the-arteco-innovation.

Finally, in a broader view, Fussler's book adds to thediscussion about the greening of industry. Questions arewhether and how ®rms may move to go beyond incre-mental innovation for sustainable development. What aredriving forces? What are external barriers and internallimitations on change? Two complementary views may bedistinguished in answering such questions by academics.One view emphasizes the relative inertness of ®rms, thedif®culties in shifting managers' mindsets, the stability oforganizational routines, the tendency to develop compe-tencies close to existing ones, and to build upon currentknowledge. In this view, sustainability is about higher-order learning, which may take place if induced by someexternal shock.

The other view puts a central focus on vision and lea-dership. Here the critical factor is whether the managerhas a strong enough conviction to make the organizationchange. Fussler strongly adheres to the second view.Hence, after having provided the argument and the tools,his invitation to the newly recruited manager to join theeco-innovation bandwagon is: the choice is yours.

So it is. But as the case histories make clear, this is notan easy job. In this respect, I would have liked Fussler tobe more critical in discussing the case histories, forexample, by bringing them together for comparison andcontrast, and by discussing which were the major obsta-cles and how they were overcome.

Frank den HondInstitute for Environmental Studies

Vrije Universiteit AmsterdamThe Netherlands

BOOK REVIEWS

BUSINESS STRATEGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT 297

# 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. Bus. Strat. Env, Vol. 6, 296±299 (1997)