World Business Leaders Focus on the Environment

Under the wary gaze of environmentalists, about 700 world business leaders Wednesday sat down here to talk about pursuing “sustained development”--a policy of not burning up the Earth’s resources faster than they can be renewed and not irreversibly polluting the air, land and water.

“Businesses are learning that sound environment practices are good business,” said Joseph E. Connor, president of the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce. The chamber organized the three-day conference, during which many major corporations took the vow.

For those polluters who have not enlisted, he said, “it’s just a matter of time.”

Environmentalists applauded--though sometimes hesitantly--the business leaders’ commitment as an essential component of preserving the Earth’s bounty for future generations.

“Lots of people are here, but lots more are not here,” said Gus Speth, president of the World Resources Institute in Washington.

Among the 42 U.S. companies represented were most of the chemical industry’s heavy hitters--including Dow, Du Pont, Monsanto, Union Carbide, American Cyanamid. Speth, though, noted the absence of banks, which help finance business investment, and insurance companies, which guarantee against disastrous financial loss from environmental disasters.

The delegates were overwhelmingly from industrial countries as opposed to the Third World and Eastern Europe, where pollution and resource depletion are often most intense.

Compared to 10 or 20 years ago, however, environmentalists at the Rotterdam conference found reason for cheer. “Some top people are here,” said Ernst von Weizsacker, director of the Institute for European Environmental Policy in Bonn.

Connor, who is also chairman of Price Waterhouse World Firm, pointed out that 150 companies and national business groups had supported the International Chamber’s business charter for sustainable development--a 16-point document committing signatories to make environmental management a high corporate priority.

Several speakers on the conference’s first day argued that market forces were inexorably propelling industry toward sound environmental practices.

“We can find products that are better for the environment and better for the consumer, and therefore better for our companies,” said Helmut Sihler, president and chief executive of Germany’s Henkel KGaA and chairman of the conference.

Robert Bringer, vice president of 3M Corp., said companies were beginning to realize that they could not afford the potential costs of sloppy environmental practices such as leaky toxic waste dumps.