 |
|
 |
HIGHLIGHTS |
|
|
|
|
|
HIGHLIGHTS |
|
|
3IG
MEETING SUMMARY SPECIAL THANKS: The Alliance for Religion and Conservation wishes to acknowledge with gratitude the assistance given to the 3iG meeting held in New York, 18th to 20th June by sponsors, partners and participants. In particular we appreciated the financial assistance provided by our four key sponsors: Citigroup; The Mott Foundation; Pilkington Foundation and WWF UK. Their support made it possible for ARC to undertake this development. We were also greatly assisted by our partners, State of the World Forum and the Commission on Globalisation, and Medley Global Advisors. Their input in terms of ideas, fundraising, thought and process enabled ARC to move ahead into a field of considerable complexity. A special thanks also to the Steering Group which met in London in April 2002 and who guided our thinking and planning.
Definitions One
of the first issues which was raised at the starting of the conference
was how can a faith group be defined. If 3iG is the International
Interfaith Group, what kind of rules will be identified to check who
can join? "
How can you define a faith group? Whatever the answers will be the group felt that there are legal implication to this question of what was a faith group, and thus what was not, and this may differ from country to country. The example of ARC was used as a model. ARC has built on the distinctive strengths of specific traditions. ARC has a basic requirement which is that faith groups, of whatever scale and size, make a public theological statement on their stand on the environment, and that they back this up by practical projects and programmes. ARC works with the distinctive strengths of each group and then when it is appropriate, brings them together, as for this conference. From the specific theological statements of each tradition, ARC is able to developed programmes that make sense to that particular tradition. Stance It
was felt important to have a strong statement of beliefs and intents,
even though it may exclude some persons/groups. It was felt that people
ought to know what they were joining. There should be something of
a strong message that describes 3iG. The groups agreed that, 3iG should
have a stance, expressed through a core mission statement, to express
the views of all its members. However this requires more discussion
and is a task for the Interim Steering Group (ISG). The role of 3iG was discussed widely. The workshops underlined a few basic questions: "
What would the role of the 3iG be? Diversity, pluralism and action It was underlined that there are some faith groups that have begun this work around social responsibility and others for whom education really needed to begin. So, it was emphasised that there was not a common starting point and that would be an important element of any kind of work that 3iG would do. It was important to recognise and stress the plurality and diversity of faith traditions and to welcome that plurality. It was recognised that there was an opportunity for 3iG, which was different from any other existing organisation. It was also felt important that from the very beginning the diversity of faiths would be part of 3iG's approach and indeed basis for funding. Again,
another important issue was felt to be the pro-activity of the faith
groups and what this concept would mean for a larger entity, which
would be known as 3iG. 3iG would have the power to empower faith groups
and their work in this field. In fact, many religious groups do not
realise the potential influence they have. It was also underlined
that in some faiths there is not a centralisation of the financial
resources. It was acknowledged that financial power might come through
different entities within the faith. 3iG should have a role in underlining
all this and in developing a model, which would enable faiths with
diverse finance structures to be participants. At this initial stage, issues such as those, which would generate tensions and discrepancies, should be avoided whereas those issues, which were truly communal, should be taken into consideration from the start. Basic Agreements A question, which was asked among the groups, was "is there any theological common ground that we can begin with?" and the result was that, at least from some reflections and experience from prior meetings, among the faith groups there seemed to be two theological principles: "
Care of Creation; It
was then felt that the mission and the broad objectives of 3iG (as
expressed in Appendix 1 - the first attempt to create an outline mission
statement) should be expanded. A list of priorities, a list of first
and second objects (core values) 3iG needed to address was needed.
It was agreed that entry into 3iG should be based on the acceptance
of the mission statement and core values. The values should be very
carefully formulated. They should have a collective view. The collective
view would have to be the agreement to the mission statement and the
core values which every group would have to sign. In this sense, groups
or religious faiths, which could not share those values, should not
be recruited. It should be a group that people want to join because
it enables them to do what they ought to do as religious communities. Clusters The concept of clusters created a lot of interest. The main aim is that clusters of different faith groups come together to address one particular issue because they feel concerned about it. The cluster system enables groups to identify key issues for themselves and then to seek allies and partners to work on this. This enables diversity within 3iG which having established the overall core statement and values, could then encourage such specific clusters. It was felt that non-faith bodies should fulfil just an advisory role to such clusters while the initiative must come from the faith groups. A cluster could be a group of religious organisations, not necessarily from one faith tradition, but from a range of faith traditions that felt a specific interest in a specific sphere. It might be that it was an initiative by an external group which realising that the faiths had the capacity to put in significant capital fund might approach them saying they would be interested in working in this field. It might start from the faiths or one faith community who felt that that was an important area but they didn't have the financial weight to have an impact, so they would come to 3iG and try to convince other groups to join them and go into this field. Clusters should not be meant as a cluster of Christian groups, or a cluster of Jewish groups and so on. The idea was that it would be pragmatic alliances between specific groups to achieve a particular goal of increasing influence and effectiveness within a sphere of social responsible investment. It was agreed that care should be taken to avoid potential opposition between clusters. Hence the focus on the environment as an agreed value. The heart of this was that religious groups were not one among the lot, there was a distinctive position that was faith based and that would be 3iG's starting point. Cascading the message and involvement The groups then underlined the importance of an organisation, which would support research and education for the faiths at all levels. The groups did feel it was important that 3iG actively supported the cascading element of the faiths' commitment to SRI. Indeed, it was agreed that all joining 3iG would have to agree to provide advice and information to their lay followers - the cascade effect. At present this is not done. 3iG can thus make a real difference here. Religious groups talk in grand terms and theoretically, but they don't indicate to their individual members that they too have a powerful role to play and the lay members should see that the world could be improved by their own involvement, especially through their investments. So, it was agreed, one of the roles of 3iG should be an educational role at all levels. Advocacy, communication and information Another role for 3iG would cover the need of facilitation around advocacy, communication and investment. While it was totally recognised by all groups that things are happening and things have been happening for the last 30 years or more around these issues, no organisations at this point are really addressing the international need for such advocacy, communication and information that 3iG could fulfil. It was felt that 3iG should also be /have a database although it was felt that, in a certain sense, availability of information was not the greatest problem. The education side should give a supportive environment where groups could actually feel empowered and have the opportunity to collect and/or assess information so that they could make a well-informed choice. The lack of information analysis which the faiths could trust and access was acknowledged to be a major concern that 3iG should try to address. At the moment, a lot of people, who theoretical have a lot of power to make decisions, do not feel empowered and capable of making these decisions. They end up delegating them away, away from the values, away from the faiths, away from the foundation mission, and then the decisions are made when they get delegated to professional money managers who mostly have very traditional views of the world. On the whole these people do not feel comfortable at all including faith related/faith consistent criteria. So, how can the gap be bridged? And how to empower the people who are fundamentally looking at the world from the point of view of values? So, something to consider was how to create an education environment in which that was possible. Structure The important issue that the groups had to take into consideration the second day of the conference was the structure and the membership 3iG should have. First of all the groups were asked if they saw 3iG as an alliance, coalition, centre or network? Many of them thought that an alliance was an alliance of shared values. On the other hand, they reckoned that a coalition and network would be too loose, while institution sounded like a more central ownership, and a centre could be a policy development house. Whatever decision was going to be taken they underlined there would be financial implications. Another question was related to the services 3iG was going to sell. Was it going to be purely educational? Was it going to be advisory? Was it going to be both? It was suggested that 3iG needed to look at both of them, namely education in terms of what the groups consider ethical and ground rules for investments. The ground rules for investments are very important to be laid down. The groups moved to address the question d (The nature of membership and methods of participation). More than one group felt the need of identifying more than one level of members. One in particular suggested that there should be four levels of membership: "
There would be a core membership, which would consist of representatives
of faith groups. They would have full membership and would represent
big blocks. Whatever the nature of the membership was, there would be different conditions for each of these varies categories, whether it was a financial obligation or the degree of engagement. The 1% fund was seen to be an option rather than something mandatory. It was also suggested that there might be a concept of 1% funds, which would be centred on specific projects and clusters. It was felt that there should be a group of funding members, or chartered members who would have to commit themselves to initially contribute to establish the basic infrastructure of the organisation which would cover staffing and overheads. It was also suggested that at a practical level a number of pilot projects should be suggested especially in education related to advocacy, investment, micromanagement, etc. and some type of research should be undertaken to explore the kinds of advice and assistance faiths required. There should be at some stage a "control panel" which would meet regularly to check the integrity of implementation of projects in accordance with the values of the organisation. Another group suggested a two-tier membership: "
The fully-fledged members. Regarding who could be a member, the general feeling was that there could be representative groups directly or indirectly having access to, control and influence on religious investments. Another
group expressed the idea of creating a The group spent quite some time on the last point looking at this from the perspective of financial analysts who were in the group. This led the group to say that whatever was done there was a need for some kind of document which would offer clarity of the rules of engagement so that there would be integrity in the whole process and people would know what they were joining and at what level. Another important point identified was a need to create a non-investing general membership. The question which generated this issue was "To be a member must you be an investing member?" The group thought that the value of people coming to look and see could be enormous (the education side of 3iG). At this level people could come, learn, feel comfortable and then, when ready, they could join fully. So, this led to suggestions of levels of investing and non-investing membership. They did recommend that the ISG considered creating a "membership working committee" that would look into these questions and come up with recommendations. Education and development They also focused on education. The group thought about the different ways in which advocacy, research, and investment should be developed and identified very different skills and programmes associated with this. These programmes and skills could be hired from outside but 3iG should know its financial capacity. So one recommendation put forward was simply that 3iG, as it developed its structure, also needed to develop its business plan. This would assess its resources, what kind of resources should be available for each of the functions, which would be described, and so on. That would help analyse what the cost of 3iG would be and even what should be the contributing level of support from the faiths. Again, it was felt that the educational and the research process was the basis in which the terms of engagement and involvement of the other possible participants should be determined. It was felt very important that 3iG structures find ways in which grassroots people could contribute to the development of clusters and programmes. 3iG should see this as possibly part of its role, and its secretariat could create discussion groups around the world in different cities, in order to enable 3iG to hear what the grassroots feel. This would give much more legitimacy to what those clusters then did and also make sure that it is for and from the grassroots. It was underlined that some of the religious groups may not have investment funds which are liquid. Faiths could be owners of real estate or for example, be like certain Hindu foundations which have billions of dollars in gold. India is the largest holder of gold, and there are certain temples where hundreds of millions of dollars of gold can be found. So, real estate could be a large area for assessment. There could be advice for better and more effective management from the conservation of resources to environmental protection and ecological balance point of view. Because of this, it was also suggested that when considering the 1% fund it should be calculated from income not from the core. It should be clearly defined what this fund (1%) was for. A part would have to be used for administration and infrastructure and the rest for financial investment in worthwhile projects. Benefits of membership One of the points raised from the discussion was the question about what the faith groups would receive if they joined 3iG. At its heart 3iG was about helping the faiths continue to earn the income that was necessary to keep the establishment, the faith structures going, but they could do it in a way which was more consistent with the values of the faiths themselves. Formal agreements to proceed It was agreed that the ISG be established and be served by ARC. Its task is to try to move from very broad principles to more detailed ones. The faith groups agreed that this process was important and that they wished to work on this with ARC and they all endorsed engagement with the process of establishing 3iG. It is important to stress that they were not at this point being asked to become members of 3iG. The faiths explicitly encouraged ARC to go on. The faiths agreed that they were willing to be counted among those interested in working with the process towards the establishment of 3iG. It was also agreed that at the next meeting the draft of "A Capital Solution revisited" would be presented. The need for a new version of this book was strongly felt and was seen as an important educational tool. Faith groups were asked to supply ARC and the ISG with any material they thought useful. Tasks From the discussion it came out that the role of the Interim Steering Group (ISG), made up of representatives from the different faiths, was to enable ARC to have a clear Mandate and Agenda in terms of papers, presentations, development and so forth. It was recognised that the opening statement of the revised Statement (Appendix 2) was still very broad and it needed fine-tuning. The conference, which had brought together a diversity of faith traditions, supported the development of a structure called 3iG. The groups identified that this was a task that needed to be done, it was an undertaking that the faith traditions there represented wished to track and to be involved in as it developed. The faiths charged the ISG and ARC as the servicing agencies of that: to develop a much greater detailed proposal and seeking to answer or respond to points A to G on the initial paper (Appendix 1). It was felt that one of the issues the ISG should focus on was the importance of stressing that faiths could be socially positive in investments and yet produce a maximum/optimum return. It was felt that the governing board of 3iG could have a special finance committee which could review or screen group of bankers, or investment advisors which meet the basic objectives of 3iG. ARC
stated that this process would take up to two years to succeed and
within that time span there would be regular meetings of the ISG.
It was agreed that the ISG work towards another meeting in 12 months
time. This would not be the final decision making meeting establishing
3iG, but it would be an expanded group of faith representatives called
to have a very frank discussion around the material which would emerge
from ARC and ISG recommending the establishment of 3iG. The
BASIC AGREEMENT AND TASKS Drawn up 19th June 2002 There is overall agreement that there is a distinct purpose and role for the establishment of 3iG. Its broad mission is stewardship and care for all creation and the possibility of the fullness of life for all people. In order to achieve this, the following issues require clarification and definition. a.
Is 3iG an alliance, institute, coalition, centre of network?
BASIC AGREEMENTS AND TASKS Drawn up 20th June 2002 Whereas it is recognised that the common value of all faiths is care of creation and the possibility of the fullness of life for all people: Therefore the groups agreed that there is a distinctive and necessary role for a global religious initiative. Specifically we recognise a need for a collaborative, organising body to:- "
Support research and education for the faiths at all levels on the
role of faiths " Facilitate collaboration among a diverse array of global religions.
|
||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
