Former CARE International chief executive, Will Day has been appointed chairman of government advisory body, the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC). He replaces Jonathon Porritt who last week left the Commission at the end of his current three-year contract, apparently with some reservations about the government’s continuing commitment to the cause of sustainable development.
Like his predecessor, Mr Day has an impeccable record and his credentials for the post are second to none. He has travelled and worked extensively in the developing world, spending much of his career in Africa. He has been a faculty member of the Prince of Wales Business and the Environment programme since 2004, a senior advisor to the UNDP Growing Business Initiative and also chairman of the non-profit organisation, Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor.
But Mr Day faces something of an uphill struggle in his new role, if Sir Jonathon’s reported remarks on leaving the Commission are to be taken in all seriousness.
The SDC is possibly the only organisation of its kind in Europe reporting directly to the top echelons of government. But these powers have not come easily to an organisation that, at its inception, was just another backwater quango. Considerable credit must go to Jonathon Porritt for making it the ‘thorn-in-the-side’ of certain government departments - transport not least among them.
In an interview given to the BBC last week, Sir Jonathon had few accolades to bestow upon government for its environmental achievements in the nine years of his SDC chairmanship, though Ed Miliband’s youthful Department of Energy and Climate Change comes in for some praise from the seasoned campaigner. As for the rest, well there appears to be little love lost as Sir Jonathon reserves his ire for the aforementioned Transport, as well as the Treasury and Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, singling out Lord Mandelson as being particularly hostile to the concept of sustainable development.
Sir Jonathon accused these departments of dogmatically following an “outdated Thatcherite model” of economic growth regardless of the social and environmental consequences. "That model is hostile to sustainable development where you are not discounting factors about people's wellbeing and the state of the environment,” he told the interviewer.
Perhaps Sir Jonathon’s blog posted as he left his office at the SDC for the last time on Monday July 27, offers a more reasoned view as the dust of his departure settled. In this he is somewhat more conciliatory of tone. The government, he says, has earned a lot of credit internationally for setting up the SDC in the first place, as well as formulating what, in his opinion, remains a “cracking good” SD strategy back in 2005.
“Getting the balance right between our advisory and capacity-building work on the one hand, and our watchdog work on the other, remains something of an art form,” he comments in this valedictory piece. “And it has to be said there have been several ministers (and even more senior civil servants!) who have been pretty angst-ridden about that balancing act over the years.
“But though it’s bound to be frustrating for any government to have a body like the SDC commenting on weaknesses as well as strengths (the media, of course, are only ever interested in the former!), I suspect the conclusion amongst most of them is broadly supportive. At least, I very much hope it is!
So full marks to the government (and to DEFRA in particular) for some serious process innovation here, and to that cohort of SD champions inside the system working away indefatigably to improve the performance of their organisations, often invisibly and usually unloved.”
I’m sure many of us will wish this indefatigable environmentalist the very best of luck in whatever path he chooses to take in the future.
Les Hunt
Editor