Interview with Henri Proglio, Veolia Environnement's Chief Executive Officer and Chairman
"Finding solutions to increasingly strict constraints to save rare resources and reduce impacts on the environment."
In your opinion, was the year 2007 a turning point in the public's increasing awareness about the challenges of sustainable development and climate change ?
The general awareness of decision-makers, the media and the public in general has been rapidly increasing over the last few years.
2007 was undoubtedly an important year with the impact of the Bali conference and the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and Al Gore. In my opinion, the essential point is that people are seeing for themselves that what has been explained to them scientifically is consistent with what they see in their daily lives. The effects of climate change can be seen everywhere. However, we must not forget that there are other major environmental challenges. For example, access to water and sanitation, and threats to biodiversity.
How does this awareness affect your role with your clients and other stakeholders ?
There is a greater awareness but, at the same time, it is already a time of action.
And action, in terms of sustainable development, is noticeable firstly in the management of urban communities and large cities around the entire world. Our current and future clients are town and city councils, and they are now moving from being concerned to taking action. We are now helping them build sustainable cities in the same way that we helped them build more efficient and less polluted cities in the past.
The strategy that we adopted a few years ago, aimed at concentrating on the business of environmental services alone, has put us in an excellent position for finding global and innovative solutions to their needs. We are one of the few companies in the world capable of doing this, because we have all the necessary knowhow.
For example, the decision that we have made to be involved in the public transportation sector is not only justified, but is also essential to prove that our company has the expertise to propose a global approach towards reducing carbon emissions in urban areas.
What are your main commitments in terms of sustainable development and how are they broken down within your different activities ?
In my opinion, we have now taken an important step and are now entering a more mature phase.
Last year we enthusiastically committed ourselves to the difficult mission of setting minimum environmental and social standards for our Group that we will apply throughout the world. This is a very demanding exercise for a company that works in nearly 70 countries across all continents. But even more demanding is the need to update the frameworks within which we are active, so as to better meet increasing constraints on rare resources and reducing impacts on the environment. It is a task in which we can play a major role, but we cannot do it alone. We need the help of our clients, and national and European authorities, to make this change that goes beyond our contractual and commercial obligations.
Veolia Environnement has much to contribute towards the definition of new models to meet the needs of large cities in the developing world.
These subjects are being brought up by an increasing number of stakeholders internationally at the moment. How do you meet their desire for transparency, education and assistance ?
In this field too, we need to know how to pass from the communication phase to the research and joint action phase.
The Sustainable Development Visiting Committee that I created last year has enabled us to benefit from the opinions of independent experts.
All opinions that they have on our strengths and weaknesses are welcome.
In 2007, we carried out an environmental and social responsibility audit on a large number of our operations in Africa and Latin America. This was commissioned in order to obtain a clearer view of our challenges and the manner in which we can face them. We have succeeded in encouraging development banks to share in the capital of our subsidiaries in several countries; for example, the World Bank, the French Development Agency in Africa and Middle East, and the EBRD in Eastern Europe.
With the help of NGOs and the main international foundations, we are searching more and more for joint action models that give priority to transparency. It is essential that everyone should be increasingly open with each other and go beyond self-interest and personal comfort, and work together to a greater extent. The urban growth of tomorrow will take place largely in areas with the least infrastructures and services. An economic and social balance is more difficult to achieve in such areas. This is a global challenge; and I believe that due to its historical, geographic, and technical experience, Veolia Environnement can contribute a great deal to meet the needs of large cities in the developing world.
At the moment, this experience is under-used, and this is a pity.
What are the strengths of Veolia Environnement in inventing and developing the future technologies of change ?
Some people often attempt to set public management against private management in our businesses.
I believe that this is absurd : there are bad private managers and good public managers, and vice versa.
Our enterprise model is better in two respects. Firstly, as an international group, Veolia Environnement has the capacity to share management experience, acquired under fundamentally distinct economic, social, environmental and climatic conditions. We can work equally well in Niger and in Norway. Secondly, we also have the means of supporting a magnitude and diversity of research and development efforts that none of our competitors can match at the present time.
In our businesses, innovation goes well beyond technology. Our principal aim is to use technology to invent new service solutions that better meet the needs of urban populations.
For example, in the essential fields of transportation, information and communication, technologies offer support to our most innovative approaches to achieve integrated management of transit systems on the scale of a Greater Urban District.
