ELI Report
Award Dinner: Apple VP Lisa Jackson honored with annual prize; former Attorney General Eric Holder gives introductory address
ELI’s 2018 Award Dinner was a star-studded event. Nearly 750 environmental leaders from across multiple sectors arrived at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C., to hear remarks from this year’s ELI Award honoree, Lisa Jackson, a former EPA administrator and currently vice president of Apple’s environment, policy, and social initiatives.
Jackson was introduced to the dinner audience by former Attorney General Eric Holder. He called her “someone who rose up through the ranks of government to hold the highest environmental post in the land and who then carried her environmental ideals and expertise into the private sector, where she is helping demonstrate the power of private-sector initiative and leadership in building the kind of sustainable future that we, as citizens, shareholders, investors, customers, and workers, all want.”
Jackson then engaged in an on-stage interview led by ELI Board Chair Benjamin Wilson. The conversation focused on the evolution and importance of environmental leadership by companies. Jackson spoke about the evolution of Apple’s sustainability initiatives and highlighted her team’s successes.
Since 2007, when Apple began addressing removing toxics from products, the company has rapidly expanded its environmental initiatives in sync with its explosive growth. Jackson noted in her speech that when she first started at Apple in 2013, the company was focused on improving packaging, such as using less plastic and sustainably sourced paper. Dreaming bigger, just five years later, Apple achieved a commitment to reaching 100 percent renewable energy for all of its global production.
Jackson explained that this accomplishment continues to be a dynamic effort. To meet its energy goals when new facilities are opened in some countries can provide a real challenge. Jackson nonetheless remains optimistic. “I think the power of the private sector to move supply chains is profound and an opportunity for leadership.” For Apple, this statement rings true. In part due to the company’s efforts, countries like Japan are encouraged to meet the increasing demand for clean energy by the private sector.
In their remarks, both Holder and Jackson also focused on the role of companies in promoting environmental justice.
“It is about being able to look at clients,” Jackson explained, “and say whether your actions are net positive for communities and health. You can make money with your clients and [also] have communities be better off for it.”
Jackson encouraged supporting the voices of minorities and women in decisionmaking, and commended ELI’s efforts toward this goal. “Women make up a large part of my staff. I don’t think that’s an accident,” she said. “As our voices are heard, it can’t help but be better for the planet. . . . I have always believed that if you promote and put forward women, good things will happen.”
In presenting the award, ELI President Scott Fulton read from the plaque and commented, “Her extraordinary work in greening Apple’s supply chain and in reducing the company’s carbon and natural resource footprint stands as a powerful example of business leadership in creating the future that ELI promotes. Her belief in environmental justice is one that aligns with the Institute’s commitment to reflecting the voice of all communities — especially the most vulnerable — in the world’s environmental laws and policies.
❧
Two forums, one conclusion: New problems require new solutions
Each year, on the day of the ELI Award Dinner, the Institute hosts an afternoon of programs dedicated to discussing the most relevant and thought-provoking environmental topics.
This year, the ELI-Miriam Hamilton Keare Policy Forum focused on A New Environmental Paradigm. For decades, the overarching approach for environmental protection was one of regulatory compliance, largely directed by government. Today, technology has enabled companies to improve their environmental performance and citizens to track it, while a connected global network has catalyzed knowledge-based economies.
What constituted a successful strategy fifteen, or even ten, years ago no longer works in operating environments that are increasingly unpredictable, fragmented, and characterized by high rates of technological change, big data, crowd communication, young industries, and an incessant drive for competitive advantage.
To create meaningful and effective environmental protection, the combined power of private environmental governance, public law, technologies, and communities needs to be harnessed to hedge against uncertainties, build resilience and organizational flexibility, and reduce surprises to all parties.
Expert panelists embraced and explored a moment in time when private environmental governance, law, technologies, and communities are coming together — allowing us to harness their combined power in a new environmental paradigm.
Moderator David Rejeski, director of ELI’s Technology, Innovation, and the Environment Project, and panelists Ann E. Condon, visiting scholar, ELI; Paul E. Hagen, principal, Beveridge & Diamond PC; Adrienne L. Hollis, director of federal policy, WE ACT for Environmental Justice; John Lovenberg, vice president, environmental, BNSF Railway; Michael G. Mahoney, vice president, assistant general counsel, and chief environment, health, and safety compliance counsel, Pfizer Inc.; and Michael P. Vandenbergh, director, Climate Change Research Network, co-director, Energy, Environment, and Land Use Program, and law professor, Vanderbilt University, discussed how to institutionalize this new paradigm and embrace new business models that will protect the planet while achieving financial goals of companies and governments alike.
ELI’s Corporate Policy Forum, Governance in an Age of Increased Environmental Accountability, Liability and Risk, honed in on the increasing role of private companies in the management and administration of environmental, health, and safety issues.
While companies are taking steps to advance and demonstrate their initiatives addressing environmental, social, and governance issues, corporate ESG disclosures and activities — or lack thereof — increasingly are creating complex legal responsibilities across multiple layers of a company’s governance apparatus, including board and executive oversight, front line auditing, and external engagement that are threatening significant liability and brand issues in the United States and abroad when not executed with abundant care.
These trends are creating a heightened need to be deliberate, proactive, and precise with ESG activities and disclosures, and to ensure proper governance procedures are in place from the factory floor to the board room to avoid the risk of increasing scrutiny and liability. The focus areas extend to reporting on greenhouse gas emissions, energy efficiency, sustainability, environmental impact lifecycles, supply chains, human and worker rights, advertising, marketing, website and public representations, and corporate environmental governance procedures.
The event concentrated on theses corporate EHS governance issues, including the emerging risks and liabilities, insight from investors, NGOs, regulators, and prosecutors on areas of focus, lessons learned from recent experiences, and best practices to mitigate risks going forward.
Our panel of experts included moderator Cassie Phillips, director of ELI’s Private Environmental Governance Initiative; Avi S. Garbow, partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, formerly EPA general Counsel; Melissa A. Hoffer, assistant attorney general and chief, energy and environment bureau, Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office; Neal Kemkar, senior counsel & director of environmental policy, General Electric; Brendan McCarthy, investment manager, The Earth Partners LP; and Lori Michelin, president and CEO, World Environment Center.
❧
Field Notes: MacBeth Dialogues improve our federalism
Regulatory and systematic changes over recent years have brought the United States to a point where our environmental system may be ready for some fundamental realignments. For example, states and businesses have enhanced abilities to address environmental problems, and technology has enabled these and other improvements. To provide analysis on these changes, ELI developed The Macbeth Dialogues in honor and memory of the late Angus C. Macbeth, one of the great leaders and thinkers in environmental law. The initiative brought together leading experts to discuss the state-federal relationship in the environmental sphere as it exists today in hopes of providing insight on the direction going forward.
In fall 2018, ELI released “The Macbeth Report: Cooperative Federalism in the Modern Era,” which synthesizes the information, and recommendations the Institute gained over the course of the dialogues and research conducted over the past year.
The report reveals strong support for an EPA leadership role in environmental science and technology as well as in interstate matters, and strong support for flexibility for states in meeting minimum national standards and setting more stringent standards as well as in enforcing delegated programs. Experts were more evenly split on state discretion to depart from national technology standards and compliance strategies as well as on federal primacy for criminal enforcement and civil rights cases. But over 70 percent of participants felt that the federal government should generally defer where states can do a better, or as good, a job.
❧
The Institute, in partnership with the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at UC Berkeley and the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, has selected projects to receive financial support under a two-year program to study the implications of the digital economy for energy and the environment. Funding comes from a grant issued by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation earlier this year.
David Rejeski, director of ELI’s Technology, Innovation and the Environment Project, noted that “the research in these areas has been disparate and episodic, so there is value in bringing together researchers from different disciplines and institutions who can collaborate and cross-fertilize over a longer period of time.”
A website to support the research network, highlight emerging results, and provide access to updated annotated bibliographies and informational inventories is available at: www.digitalenergyenvironment.org.
❧
ELI continued its discussions on environmental justice in the 21st century. Studies continue to highlight the disproportionate exposure of marginalized communities to environmental issues such as air pollution and climate change.
Building on the pivotal discussions in Parts 1 and 2 of the series Environmental Justice in the 21st Century: Threats and Opportunities, Part 3 featured a discussion led by the principal co-authors of the 1987 United Church of Christ report that first shed light on the problem, Charles Lee and Vernice Miller-Travis, as well as leading professors Ezra Rosser and William Snape.
Moderated by Kendra Brown, these experts explored the progress made and the challenges facing environmental justice communities. It was a dynamic evening exploring the impact of the 1987 report, the role of students in facing current environmental justice challenges, and issue areas such as native sovereignty and fossil fuel impacts on environmental justice communities.
This program was co-sponsored by ELI, the ABA Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice, and the Program on Environmental and Energy Law at American University Washington College of Law.
❧
ELI Senior Attorney Linda Breggin was featured on Nashville’s WSMV News 4. The news story covered Mayor David Briley’s announcement of the Food Saver Challenge encouraging restaurants and business to donate what would otherwise be thrown away.
Breggin serves as the Project Coordinator for the Nashville Food Waste Initiative — a project of the Natural Resources Defense Council developing high-impact local policies and on-the-ground actions to address food waste.
“While we are throwing away all of this food, we have neighbors who don’t know where their next meal is coming from,” Breggin said.
Apple VP Lisa Jackson honored with annual prize; former Attorney General Eric Holder gives introductory address at annual Award Dinner.