Former Finance Minister Trevor Manuel has criticised both governments and companies for failing to live up to their commitments on sustainable development and has called for better laws and greater enforcement of those laws.

He was speaking at the first ever Sustainable Brands Conference to be held in Africa, in Cape Town, at the weekend.

He suggested that companies move far beyond the comfort of simply “ticking boxes” on sustainability reports.

“My plea is that we think about the mode of sustainability accounting differently and recognise that if the only achievement is a contest to see how many boxes a corporation can tick in a particular column, then the endeavour for sustainability would have floundered on the sharp pencil of the accountant.”

He said many of the 193 United Nations (UN) member States which easily signed UN protocols at the point of agreement, failed to absorb the agreements into their national legislation. If they did, they were often not enforced.

“We need much better laws; we need verifiable commitment to the promises and accords and we need action and enforcement by governments,” he told several hundred delegates.

Manuel mentioned some of the threats facing the world, from overfishing to species extinction and thinning tropical forests.

“We can and should examine the rate of destruction of the ecobalances of our ocean where the consequences of illegal and unrecorded overfishing wreak havoc and where plastic pollution is both visible from outer space and present in microparticles in the digestive tracts of the seafood we consume.”

He said the challenge now was to create a strong cadre of activists and to ask pertinent questions, such as in oil-rich areas near the city of Fort McMurray, in Alberta, Canada, where a wildfire had destroyed everything in its path and displaced 100 000 people. 

There had been huge controversy when former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper advocated to go ahead with the extraction of oil from the tar sands in the area, which some claimed would wreak massive environmental degradation.

“Now my hunch is that the reason why the fires are out of control is that Alberta has an exposed body of hydrocarbons, destroyed vegetation and altered water courses. Where do we start to ask the questions of the oil extractors?  Do we ask when we read their glossy sustainability reports or do we factor in the devastating costs of Fort McMurray?

“What about the devastation in other parts of the world, such as the Niger Delta? What about the billions of litres of gases flared because their conversion into fuel would reduce the profits of the oil giants? Who asks these questions?”

Manuel cited recent cases that made headlines, such as Volkswagen’s diesel emissions saga “that shocked many of us to the core”; Mitsubishi’s admission to euphemistically “altering the results” on 25 of its models; and, more recently, the sterilisers for humidifiers produced and distributed by Reckit Benckiser, that have allegedly killed about 100 people in South Korea.

“In respect of sustainability reporting, we have to wonder what is there to believe in. However, what we cannot do is to abandon this fundamental cause,” pleaded Manuel.

“We have to broaden the discussion and take the questions of sustainability out of the boardrooms and the annual reports or the polite discussions in the developed world and ensure that everybody, but especially the poor and the young, are part of the discussion.”

Manuel, who holds a number of nonexecutive board positions, including at Old Mutual, SABMiller and Rothschild, delivered the keynote opening address at the conference which is focusing on how brands can create positive change in society.