Cost of coffee.indd - RISC

appendix 9: behind the mask
the real face of corporate social responsibility
All day a steady file of people make their way up and down the potholed main road running
through Umuechem, going to and from a polluted stream that is now their only source of water.
Large trucks thunder by at regular intervals, on their way to and from the oil pumping station
on the outskirts of town. For, despite the lack of basic amenities, this is the oil-rich Niger Delta
of southern Nigeria.
As well as taps that are dry, this town of 10,000 people also has a hospital that has never
treated a patient, a secondary school where no lessons have ever been taught, a post office
that has never handled a letter and a women’s centre that has never held a meeting. All were
supposed to have been supplied under ‘community development’ schemes, funded from oil
money – local wells produce 15,000 barrels a day. But all have failed or remain unfinished.
Four of these projects were ‘generous’ gifts from the Shell Petroleum Development Company
of Nigeria – the oil giant’s subsidiary that runs the flow station near Umuechem and is the
country’s dominant oil company. The others, including the water system, came from the statefinanced
Nigeria Delta Development Corporation, which works alongside Shell – to similar
effect.
Sadly, this story of failure is not new. In 1990, when the country was under military rule, local
young people mounted a protest about the lack of such facilities. Shell called in the police,
most of the town was burned to the ground and 80 people were killed. To this day, no one has
received a penny in compensation and the basic amenities are still missing.
This is the story of corporate social responsibility – or CSR – writ large. Certainly, it is a story
that stands in stark contrast to Shell’s professed commitment to ‘core values of honesty,
integrity and respect for people’.
Outside certain areas of business and investment and supporters in the public sector, few
people will know much about what CSR is, where it comes from and how it works. If they have
ever heard of it, they will probably just think that it sounds like a good thing (which it does,
that is part of the point). But this is now a big, and growing, industry, seen as a vital tool in
promoting and improving the public image of some of the world’s largest corporations.
In simple terms, companies make loud, public commitments to principles of ethical behaviour
and undertake ‘good works’ in the communities in which they operate. It sounds and looks like
a modern version of selfless philanthropy and no doubt in many individual cases is motivated
by a genuine wish to help and has led to some benefits. The problem is that companies
frequently use such initiatives to defend operations or ways of working which come in for
public criticism.
‘We can’t be so bad,’ would go a company’s clichéd CSR-backed response. ‘Look at all the nice
things we do.’
CSR, in other words, can become merely a branch of PR. Sometimes this looks like the only
reason for spurts of development activity by large companies. Shell, for instance, was at
the forefront of CSR in Britain, following the joint public relations disasters of the Nigerian
government’s execution of human rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and the row over the
company’s plan to dump the Brent Spar North Sea oil platform – both in 1995. Certainly for
some, such as those living in Umuechem, Shell’s CSR programme has brought no tangible
benefits.
Christian Aid, of course, supports responsible and ethical action by business. The problem with
CSR, we say, is that it is unable to deliver on its grand promises. The case studies in this report
highlight that the corporate world’s commitments to responsible behaviour are not borne out
by the experience of many who are supposed to benefit from them. In some cases, the rhetoric
and the reality are simply contradictory.
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