SALİM KADIBEŞEGİL

Salim Kadibesegil is one of the most important names in Turkey in terms of strategic communication management and reputation, but his real distinguishing feature is that he has been thinking over social benefit, ecology and sustainability for a very long time as well as acting about them. We have asked difficult questions about the physical and social problems of the world to Salim Kadibesegil, who has supported and followed EKOIQ from the very beginning, and we have received answers which should be considered carefully.
Interview by Baris DOĞRU
Photos by Ozgur GUVENC

What if birds crash into wind turbines, Salim? This is the title of your book which can be accessed by everyone and downloaded free from your blog. It was surprising for us to find out that EKOIQ was the source of inspiration for the title of this book by reading the preface.

EKOIQ has always been my compass since it was born. I can say that it is the bright side of life which is worth living. Yes, the title of my last book comes from a small piece of news that I’ve read in EKOIQ. It’s a small piece of news, but it tells so much! It reveals the paradoxes of life. Our world needs clean energy. In the “nice” periods of history, humans discovered the wind and the energy that blew with it. They ground wheat and corn by using windmills. They turned water into energy. Now, we want to use these resources again. However, rudeness, irregularity and insensitivity have taken us so far away from our selves. The feeling of converting everything into cash as soon as possible seems to eliminate the issues about the sustainability of life. On the one hand, we build wind turbines, but on the other hand we ignore where we build them and how we threaten the naturalness of the habitat.
Look at me for example. I live in Alacati, Izmir. Our wind has become our songs. I have a pleasant feeling whenever I see wind turbines. I have a happy expression on my face. I can see. However, it puts us off the idea to equip everywhere with wind turbines, to block the migratory routes of birds and to put these poles in the middle of our living spaces. I find it really hard to understand what this greed and this blindness are. Hydroelectric power plants and wind power plants are the best examples of the paradoxes of life. On the one hand, they are what we call clean energy that we need so much, but on the other hand they can suddenly be the top players of a natural carnage.
Hydroelectric power plants and wind power plants, which reveal that life is really an “ethical exam”, are the fight between the people who have converted their feelings into cash and the common sense of human mind. That’s why, I have given my book, which consists of my blog posts, the title of the news I’ve quoted from EKOIQ. Because all that writing tries to tell exactly this!
Where do you think the world is heading? Extremely contradictory tendencies are experienced together. On the one hand, technological developments blow up the borders between humans, but on the other hand people strangle each other because of different religions, sects or cultures in all corners of the world, especially in our country. There is a similar situation about the environment. The states of the world come together and make important decisions at the Paris Climate Summit whilst natural carnages continue without slowing down. How do you interpret this course of events?

I read about a development that I was most scared of experiencing in the January 2016 issue of EKOIQ. “A company called Vitality Air, which is based in Canada, has started to bottle fresh air from the Rocky Mountain and to sell it to its Chinese customers. The idea of bottled air has come up as a joke, but after selling 500 canisters in only four days, the founders of the company have decided to commercialise it.”
This piece of news gives us a clear picture of what can happen in the future. When I was a child, we used to drink tap water. Demijohns of water would be brought home, but the main habit was tap water. After a short time, we started to see “undrinkable” written on taps! The development in putting oxygen in jars started by Vitality Air is not a sci-fi novel. It is real life!
I’ve recently read Sapiens; A Brief History of Humankind written by Yuval Noah Harari, and I think it should be read a few times. The answers to all the questions are in this book, humankind is not changing for the better. It is preparing its own end and the end of our planet whose resources are consumed irresponsibly!

We came to know the concept of “ownership” through agricultural revolution in 10000 BC. This concept merged with the “greed” of the Industrial Revolution in 1800s. So, we were past the point of no return. We found ourselves in a circle of problems when ethics, which is the main quality of the humankind distinguishing it from the other living things, were replaced with cash and the things that cash can buy.

We sometimes find some “ends” somewhere in this circle and start to pull them. We pull these ends with pure and clear feelings so that we can stop climate change, we can find solutions to famine and poverty even if they are temporary, we can avoid consumption of fresh water resources, we can prevent epidemics and we can make flowers bloom in gun barrels at war. When we stop to take a breath, we see that each one of these ends that we pull from this circle turn into a new circle of problems. Unfortunately, this kills our excitement, motivation and future hopes!
The environment that the world needs among all these problems is actually “the Gezi spirit “! Every country has their own “Gezi spirits” in the recent past. However, these spirits cannot come to power. It has become a current issue to find solutions to the problems of the world caused by humans through the agency of institutions such as the UN, the World Bank and the IMF, which are built by humans. The forces which allow these institutions to exist do not want Gezi spirits to wonder around, of course.
For instance, people who were born in 1990s in the European countries and who now have a job cannot make heads or tails of the refugee problem. According to them, refugees are people who had to leave their countries because of war. They flee into the European countries at the expense of losing whatever they have and dying on the way. They want to take refuge with their kids, but they disturb the Europeans! Their quality of life is affected negatively due to this state of affairs.
And there is a phenomenon labelled as Islamic terrorism. That’s why, they cannot take the tube and go to matches. The Middle East and especially Africa are a source of trouble for the people who were born in Europe in 1990s. However, none of them realise or none of them are told that the greedy global policies followed by their fathers and grandfathers for the last 150 years are responsible for this situation that they are witnessing or complaining about.
The ethical values were swept under the carpet once an appetite emerged when the Industrial Revolution evolved through capitalism and once it turned into earning cash from cash. Then, the humankind took the last turn with the consumer society and the lifestyle which reinforced the view that cash could buy anything.
What’s worse, a unit based on USD was developed for the development levels of countries. I think that was the death blow. Because growing, growing more, growing extravagantly and growing by behaving shamelessly and by leaving ethical values aside meant “development” in terms of USD. There was not such a development indicator before the Industrial Revolution. We might not have had fridges at home and we might have lived decades away from the spaces which evolved with electricity. Humankind might have been at war “in the name of religion”, but none of these did harm as much as measuring the income per capita based on USD.
The last 150 years were recorded as the most unfortunate period of this planet in tens of thousands of years of the history of humankind. People are expecting to fix them now, but I’m afraid there will be nothing to fix soon.
In fact, it is enough to look at two basic parameters in order to see where we are heading: how much climate change passed the red line and the population explosion that cannot be controlled especially in undeveloped countries. Figures are not very promising!
Unfortunately, these big and serious political problems that the world is experiencing can sometimes turn the environment and climate change problems into subsidiary issues. I sometimes think that they resemble people who strangle each other on a sinking ship. We do not care about a process which will wipe us out when we are trying to wipe each other out. Well, why is mankind so short-sighted?

I guess three phenomena will determine how the life cycle will be shaped in the new century: energy, seeds and technology. Finance will be positioned at the background according to politics and developments! In fact, human laws and natural laws will confront each other again in a more violent way. While I’m saying these, I’m picturing the tsunami which brought Japan on the verge of a disaster. There was neither law nor any other phenomenon to prevent the tsunami when it carried away human-made dwelling units.
Life is based on three entities: family, social life which consists of the family and humankind which is the universal equivalent of social life. I think we have lost the nuclear family. I think the loss of basic behavioural patterns, which represent moral and ethical values in terms of good – bad, right – wrong and beautiful – ugly, has influenced our social life and the universal dimension with multiplier effect. We’ve lost our sensitivity to grow flowers in a pot at home. It used to be a rule to finish the food in our plates when there were so many hungry people in the world. There used to be something called neighbourhood solidarity. We lost those behavioural patterns, which were as necessary as air and water for life and which only belonged to humans among all the other living things, once we got away from “the family”.
The second failure is the ethical erosion of science. Science has been under pressure for ages. Right. However, if you watch Manhattan, the popular miniseries of the recent times, you will see that we are all scared of the homicides committed in the name of science in all areas of life such as health, drugs and genetically modified food. As you know, Manhattan was the code name of the development of atom bomb in the USA.
I think the third and the most dangerous indicator is that cash and religion have filled in all the blank spaces. Naturally, politics is shaped by taking account of these factors. We experienced the most striking example of this for the sake of building BP in the Middle East in 1915. Its effects have somehow come until today.
Religion has been exploited in order to own oilfields, and cash has shaped politics. Countries and nations have been invented, and their borders have been drawn on desert sand. Would our world have been a different place if the cash spent on finding and processing oil had been spent on developing technology for obtaining energy from resources such as wind and sun? What we are witnessing today is the fight between the reason and common sense and the conversion of feelings into cash.
You are actually a communication professional. So, I’ll ask you clearly: If you could, what would you do first about communicating sustainability and climate change?

We should meet the world out of the areas masked by cash, religion and politics. It seems as if returning to a simple village life is the reflection of such a longing. Returning to self… Returning to it with intellectual knowledge…
For instance, “accountability” should be defined as the top basic value of the life cycle. Accountability, which is one of the elements in the nature of sustainability, is developing to become a value on its own. Accountability for whom? First for ourselves and then, for the local community that we belong to and, of course, for whatever comes next in the universal projection.
Today, we need brand new accountability criteria. Their contents should not be able to move along if they are not “convincing”. I think of environmental impact assessment reports. In fact, they are documents which are made up in expectancy of accountability. However, none of them are convincing. Therefore, I would work on this issue first. On what the accountability criteria, which could convince society, would be.
One of the issues that I focus on most is the lack of communication between the people who work on this subject most – non-governmental organisations, academics and activists. Unfortunately, there is such a matter in addition to the people who try to strangle each other hopelessly. Don’t you think the people who cannot come together and build shared wisdom and a movement are as pathetic as the other people? What do you think of that?

I think exactly the opposite. They should “definitely” stay in different corners of the world in terms of their subjects of interest. Because each of them has different knowledge, experience and observations. They are necessary to be able to deal with the areas managed by cash. That’s why, civil society has gained this much strength. I leave aside the evil-minded people who intend to undermine others, of course. However, solidarity of the Gezi spirit is the best example of this subject. Groups which wouldn’t sit at the same table went out for a common purpose. Another example that comes to my mind is Seattle in 1999. Another one is Occupy Wall Street. I have recently written a blog post entitled “Decent Society or Civil Society?” Since some companies which discovered the power of civil society over governments entered the scene as associations, foundations and such, it caused trouble for the identity of civil society. We should be careful about this.
You know the business world very well. After all, most of the businesses consult you. What do you think about their situation? How open are they to cooperating about these issues? Do they believe that they play a role in building shared wisdom?

I think the business world has lost its bearings. Long-term strategic plans do not work anymore. Especially the speed of technology pushes the limits of acting on the basis of templates that businesses are used to. They cannot even predict where regulations will end. For instance, will there be any drug companies in 100 years? I don’t think so! I think international institutions identified as NGOs will replace the drug industry with their R&D, their marketing and their solutions focused on tailor-made treatment.
We should take the change and transformation in the automotive industry as an example. Tesla started a new period. The other industries will have their own Teslas, but how ready are they?

I think we can speak the same language with the people who invest in the innovation culture. Because the business world can make a lot of money through social innovation – if it’s problem is only making money – and do a service to humankind at the same time.

I think the importance of employees has been discovered. However, it is not very meaningful for the companies which adopt sustainability as a business model to discover the importance of employees. Therefore, I believe that sustainability of regulations should be so inclusive that it becomes valid in all the industries. On the other hand, NGOs and trade associations have a lot to do. For instance, they gave a good account of themselves in terms of Global Compact. They became aware of GRI reporting. However, we need profundity whose essence is sincerity. That’s the job of those institutions.
In your article, in Inmagazine, which is a magazine published by TEID (Ethics & Reputation Society), you tell that shareholder-focused companies are out-of-date and that they are replaced first with stakeholders and then with shapeholders. Finally, you talk about the term “smallholders” invented by Toby Webb, the founder of Ethical Corporation. The article is entitled “How can Brands help Smallholder Farmers about Sustainability?” So, this subject is also related to environmental sustainability. Can you tell us a little bit about this subject?

In a sense it is returning to “family”. This is what smallholder means to me. It consists of entrepreneurship, local identity, culture, economy and processes and policies which define sustainability. The smaller the scale is, the easier it is to manage it and to achieve tangible results. We can say that it is like the difference between managing a holiday village with 1500 beds and managing a family-run business with 25 rooms. This kind of a process will be experienced in the world’s course of events. However, I cannot estimate its lifespan.

Smallholders are a small group of manufacturers that has ideas, skills, intellectual knowledge and production capacity, and that is open to cooperation. Their equipment is at peace with nature and in harmony with humans. I think that the planet will gain some things once brands start cooperating globally with these groups.