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This article reports on the results of a collaborative event ethnography (CEE) conducted at the 2012 World Conservation Congress (WCC) on Jeju Island, South Korea. The WCC is organised every four years by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which bills the Congress as the world′s most important conservation forum. Hence, analysis of the event illuminates current and future trends in the global conservation movement. This analysis builds on a previous study conducted at the 2008 WCC in Barcelona, Spain, which provides something of a baseline for assessing changes in conservation policy in the intervening period. I contend that one of the most salient trends at the 2012 WCC was a dramatic increase in emphasis on market-based mechanisms and corporate partnerships, elements of a growing global pattern that has been called ′neoliberal conservation′ or ′Nature TM Inc.′, on the part of IUCN leadership and its major partners, particularly the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). While this agenda remains actively contested by elements of the IUCN′s membership, little of this contestation was reflected in the Congress′s public spaces. I therefore describe the WCC as an effort to ′orchestrate′ the appearance of general consent around a neoliberal agenda-a dynamic that I characterise, following recent theorisation, as ′post-political′-by means of a variety of strategies, including staging consensus, synchronising discourse, expanding alliances, disciplining dissent, appropriating a ′radical′ agenda, and ′cynical′ reasoning.

This article reports on the results of a collaborative event ethnography (CEE) conducted at the 2012 World Conservation Congress (WCC) on Jeju Island, South Korea. The WCC is organised every four years by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which bills the Congress as the world's most important conservation forum. Hence, analysis of the event illuminates current and future trends in the global conservation movement. This analysis builds on a previous study conducted at the 2008 WCC in Barcelona, Spain, which provides something of a baseline for assessing changes in conservation policy in the intervening period. I contend that one of the most salient trends at the 2012 WCC was a dramatic increase in emphasis on market-based mechanisms and corporate partnerships, elements of a growing global pattern that has been called 'neoliberal conservation' or 'NatureTM Inc.', on the part of IUCN leadership and its major partners, particularly the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). While this agenda remains actively contested by elements of the IUCN's membership, little of this contestation was reflected in the Congress's public spaces. I therefore describe the WCC as an effort to 'orchestrate' the appearance of general consent around a neoliberal agenda—a dynamic that I characterise, following recent theorisation, as 'postpolitical'— by means of a variety of strategies, including staging consensus, synchronising discourse, expanding alliances, disciplining dissent, appropriating a 'radical' agenda, and 'cynical' reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper addresses the limited evidence of how futures work bears fruit in the present by exploring a specific, yet significant, empirical case study. The results of our longitudinal study into the WBCSD Vision 2050 Initiative shed light on how organisations are harnessing the perspective of the long term future to identify what can and should be done in the near term to keep progress towards sustainability on track. We provide evidence of the expected and realised benefits of this collaborative futures initiative. These benefits extend beyond direct decision support, manifest at multiple levels and vary over time. We note that shift from single client to collaborative futures work is inherent to addressing sustainability challenges and call for more research into how collaborative futures practices are evolving to deal with new puzzles and wicked problems. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

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This article critically reflects on today's dominant articulation of corporate responsibility (CR) in terms of thinking, practice, content and consequences. We examine what has and has not changed since a seminal critique of the notion of business social responsibility put forward by Theodore Levitt 50 years ago. We illustrate our argument with the case of Botnia in Uruguay, which has recently generated much discussion in international media, and other examples that are illuminating on the problematic nature of contemporary CR. We find that little in fact has changed between the 1958 and 2008 versions of CR except for the context of (global) business, especially the threat posed by sustainability questions and the more systematic ideological rejection of regulation. As opposed to these contemporary evolutions, we call for alternative, regulation-based articulations of CR, which would improve corporate accountability on social and environmental questions. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]